The Golden Age

"You are rather free and easy with your offer, sir, to mutilate your own memories."

"The knowledge that you suffered came through unwitting trespass on your privacy. How can privacy be restored unless that knowledge is abolished? If the event is forgotten by all, if all evidence is erased, then it is as if the unfortunate event had never occurred. But your expression shows you do not agree."

"You disgust me."

"More apologies are tendered. But if the memories are unpleasant, why cherish or preserve them? How can they have a value?"

"Because they are real. Real! Doesn't that mean anything to anyone any more?!" He turned his back on the Chimera and stared out over the balcony. Above him and below him, windows representing activity in the public thoughtspace flashed and glittered. Pictures, icons, dream dramas, ghost archives, and strange scenes lived and pulsed.

To Phaethon's surprise the Chimera answered him: "If our perception of reality is vulnerable to manipulation by our technology, why should we not employ that technology, if it serves our convenience, utility and pleasure? Where is the wrong?"

Phaethon gripped the rail and spoke without turning his head. "Where?! Where is the wrong?! Damn your eyes, where is my wife? Where is Helion? Imagine waking up to find your

father is dead, replaced by a copy of himself. A near copy, almost an exact copy, but a copy nonetheless. How am I supposed to feel? Is it supposed simply not to bother me? Am I supposed to be satisfied with the copy, if the copy is close enough?

"But what if it is not close enough? What then? What if your wife is gone—a woman you always thought was finer and better than anything you could ever wish, a love more perfect than you had dreamed—a happiness beyond hope— gone! Gone! Replaced by a walking mannequin, a doll! And, to add cruelty to cruelty, the doll is hypnotized into believing that she is your wife, truly believing! A perfectly nice girl, a twin sister to your wife, looking like her, talking like her. The girl even wants to be her. But she is not her.

"And what if—what if you find yourself staring at a mirror and wondering how much of yourself has been forgotten. Or how much of yourself is real... ? What if you do not know whether you are dead or alive? I think you will begin to see exactly how much wrong is in all that. Convenience? Utility? Pleasure? I do not feel particularly pleased or well served at the moment."

The chimera answered: "Who, then, is to blame, Phaethon of Rhadamanth? Godlike powers mankind now enjoys; to render good service to others, or to serve one's own selfish ends, as one chooses. But if one will not heed the wishes of others, do not expect to be heeded when one's turn comes to cry out for comfort."

The voice was different. Phaethon looked over his shoulder.

The self-image had changed; the Chimera now had the head of a crowned human man, a bald eagle, a king cobra. This was a different part of the Eleemosynary mass-mind; a part of the central command structure. This was one of the Directorships.

Phaethon straightened and turned. "You are one of the Seven Peers. Gannis said you all wished for me to fail. Is it true? Do you relish my distress? My wife is dead and worse than dead; and I was not even allowed to see a funeral."

The snake head stuck out its tongue, tasting the air; the eagle stared unblinking; but the human head looked grave and sad. "The Eleemosynary Composition wishes ill to none. Your pain causes nothing but grief and sympathy in us. Once, there might have been a way to avoid all this strife. It is even now, perhaps, not to late."

"Not too late ... for what?"

"You and Helion are at odds. You and the relic of Daphne are in pain; she loves you but you want the love of her original self."

"Is that wrong? If a strange woman looked like my wife and thought she was my wife, she would still deserve no love from me. Do you think I married my wife for her looks? Do you think I married her for the kind of surface qualities which can be copied into a doll? Just how shallow do you all think I am?"

A hard, harsh look came onto Phaethon's face then. He spoke again in a quiet, grim, and deadly voice: "Just how easy to stop do you think I am?"

The Chimera said: "If you and Helion and Daphne's relic were willing to enter into Composition with all of us, your fears would be soothed, your desires satisfied. Compromise and renunciation would satisfy your wishes, and hers, and his, and there would be no more conflict. Every defect and darkness in your soul would be supplied and enlightened by the thought of another in our Composition; all our thoughts and minds would mingle together in one whole symphony of harmonious love and peace and joy. You would be one with a thousand loved ones, closer than friends or fathers or wives, and all your self-centered pain would be sponged away.

"Find compromise," the Chimera concluded. "Submit your selfishness to the general good; renounce yourself. Do this, and you will find comfort and peace beyond measure."

"Indeed, sir? And what if I want something better than comfort, rest, renunciation, and peace?"

"But what else can there be to want?" The Chimera spread its hands, a mild smile showing puzzlement.

Phaethon stood tall, and said softly: "Deeds of renown without peer."

Phaethon knew what the Eleemosynary Chimera would say next: that the desire for a life of glory was nothing more than selfishness and self-aggrandizement; that all human accomplishment was the outcome of a collective effort.

Compositions generally talked all the same way. Mass-minds were the last refuge, in modern times, of that type of person who would have, in earlier eras, turned to collectivist political or religious movements, and drowned their individuality in mobs, in mindless conformity, in pious fads and pious frauds. Just the thought of it made Phaethon weary with disgust.

But the Chimera surprised him: "For what price will you forswear your present attempts to rediscover the contents of your hidden memories? For what price will you abandon, now and forever, that project which your earlier self agreed, at Lakshmi, to abandon?"

Phaethon realized that the Eleemosynary was not just any mass-mind but a Peer and a politician. A version of this same Composition once, long ago, had ruled all Asia. Perhaps it was not going to talk in that same pious way in which all other Compositions spoke. It was willing to make a deal.

The Chimera's snake head spoke: "We offer you Helion's place at our table. Join with us as a Peer, one of the seven paramounts of the Golden Oecumene. Helion may soon be declared legally dead: you are much like him, and would make a fit replacement. Wealth, honor, and respect will flow to you. The Solar Array may be yours. A central place in the coming Transcendence in December may be yours."

The Chimera swelled slightly in size, growing six inches taller. In Eleemosynary iconography, icons grew larger as more and more members of the mass-mind turned their atten- tion to the scene.

The eagle head spoke next: "You will have richness and prestige more splendid than any captain of industry history remembers, more than any mass-minds' multinational wealth, more than conquerors of empires in ancient times enjoyed.

The Eleemosynary Composition makes a preliminary offer of twelve billion kiloseconds of time currency, or its equivalent value in energy, antimatter, or gold."

It was an enormous fortune. With his connections to Rhad-amanthus shut, Phaefhon could not instantly calculate the energy value he was being offered with any precision; but, roughly converted to foot-pounds, it would have been enough to accelerate a large-sized space colony to one or two gravities for two hundred hours.

Phaethon spoke in a skeptical tone: "This is staggering largesse, even by Eleemosynary standards."

"Let us rejoice in sacrifices, howsoever great, provided they serve the good of all."

Phaethon's eyes narrowed. "Your motive is unclear."

"The inner thoughts of the Eleemosynary Ethics Oversight Unit are posted on public channels for all to see. Only individual minds, cut off and alone, can pursue secret plans or schemes based on dishonesty. We are not an individual; we can seek the good of the whole, even a good that includes your own."

"What of Helion's good? You talk with easy air about betraying him."

"The danger you pose is greater than the benefits he promises. He should be happy to be sacrificed for the common good. Besides, if Helion is truly dead, you come into possession of his copyright holdings, including his intellectual property. This includes his memory archives and personality templates; so armed, you can easily create a son, modified to be loyal to you, equipped with the skills and knowledge and persona of Helion, ready and able to run the Solar Engineering Effort."

Phaethon recoiled in disgust. Silver-Gray protocols forbade the duplication and editing of other people's personalities, whether their copyrights were lapsed or not. Obviously the constituent members of a mass-mind would have less than perfect respect for the mental integrity of individuals.

"I think we have nothing to say to each other, sir," said Phaeton coldly.

"You reject our offer to negotiate?"

"My soul is not for sale, thank you."

The Chimera stepped backward, its three heads glancing at each other in puzzled surprise. "Your every word displays you as a self-centered man; yet now, when you are penniless, you reject unimaginable fortune! Surely you do not pretend you serve some higher cause or fine ideal, not when all of society, all civilization, opposes you? How can you be so certain?"

Phaethon smiled in contempt and shook his head. "You should ask rather, what cause have I for doubt? For every question I ask, I am answered with lies, illusions, and amnesia. These are not weapons honest men are wont to use; you use them; the logical implication from this is hardly that I am the one who is in the wrong, is it?"

"You will not give us the benefit of the doubt?"

"Certainly. By straining the generosity of my imagination, I am willing to entertain the possibility that you all are merely cowards rather than scoundrels."

"Yet you consented to the Lakshmi Agreement. You now seek to circumvent it. Is this honest?"

"I have not seen this alleged agreement, do not remember it, and do not know its terms. The version of me who agreed is the version you and yours wanted erased! If I have broken it, feel free to attempt to take me to court. If not, then kindly mind your own affairs."

"No one says the Agreement has been broken, merely circumvented." The Chimera made a delicate gesture with one hand. "You seek to defeat the intent of the Agreement, even if you live up to its terms."

"Your point being?"

"Acts can be dishonorable and still be legal."

"That is true, but I am surprised you have the gall to say that to my face."

Two heads blinked in confusion. The snake stuck out its tongue. "Gall?"

Phaethon said, "Hypocrisy might be a better word. Or impertinence. You dare to stand there and tell me it is dishon-

orable for me to circumvent an agreement which you have not just circumvented but broken and ignored!"

"We have broken no law."

"Hah! The Agreement was that everyone would forget whatever it was that I had done. But so far I have not met a single person who does not remember! Are all the Peers above the law, or is it only Helion, Gannis, and you? No, excuse me, Wheel-of-Life also is ignoring the Agreement; it was she who detected my presence at Destiny Lake and informed Helion."

"The Agreement provisions allowed to the Peers an exception. The redacted memories are permitted to us when they are directly pertinent to the conduct of our interest and efforts, or for other reasons of public need."

"But not to me, not even when I need those memories to defend my interests in a lawsuit?"

"The exception provision does not extend to you. That was not a point for which you negotiated."

Phaethon thought this might be another clue as to what his original self had intended.

But he said: "I am more confused than ever about this alleged Agreement. It seems, at best, poorly put together. If you did not want me to even investigate my loss of memory, once I had discovered my memory was gone, why didn't you make that one of the provisions in the Agreement?"

"Frankly, that idea that you would become curious about your missing memory was never seriously discussed. The Agreement provisions were put together rather hastily."

"But surely the Sophotech lawyers drafting the Agreement ran predictive scenarios of every possible outcome, didn't they? They must have foreseen possible problems. That's what Sophotechs are for."

"No Sophotech was involved."

"What? What do you mean? I thought Nebuchednezzar Sophotech advised the Hortators."

"Nebuchednezzar had an extension present on Venus, but refused to aid the Hortators in this case. The College of Hor-

tators proceeded without Sophotech help, and drafted the Agreement themselves."

Phaethon fell silent a moment. He was not certain how to take this. The famous Nebuchednezzar Sophotech refused to advise the Hortators? Refused?

According to the diary memory files Daphne had shown him, Daphne had spoken with Helion in a sane period between his eternally repeated self-immolation. During that conversation, Helion had expressed frustration that Aurelian was not cooperating with the Lakshmi Agreement.

The same diary file had also shown him her memory (when she had been leaving the dream-weaving competition) of the Aurelian Sophotech criticizing the Hortators. Aurelian had spoken of the attempted mass amnesia with jocular contempt.

And the Earthmind, whose time was so precious that She hardly ever paused to speak to anyone, had paused to speak to him, asking him to stay true to himself. Not what one would say to someone to make them content with false memories.

And ... and what had he—the forgotten version of him— what had he been relying on when he made the Lakshmi Agreement in the first place? What had made him so certain?

Then, a feeling like a light began to rise up in him. He could not help but smile. "Tell me, my dear Composition, your very structure makes it impossible for you to hide thoughts in one part of yourself from other parts, isn't that true?"

"There are forms of mental hierarchies which control internal information flow; but Compositions are democratic and isonomial."

"The Transcendence in December, when all available human minds will gather to decide what must be decided about the coming millennium... it is just another form of Composition, isn't it? A temporary one ... ?"

"If you are thinking of using the Transcendence as a podium from which to denounce the Peerage to the rest of mankind, you will be disappointed, I fear. While there are no official controls on information flows, there are informal con-

trols, social controls. Few people heed the ravings of an outcast; everyone's attention will be focused on those people who are central to public attention ..."

"In other words, the Peers. Just now you offered me a central place in the Transcendence. Helion's place, I assume. So, if I refuse, he will be honored by having crowds of visitors flood through his brain."

"You express it crudely. His thoughts, dreams, and visions will swell to encompass wide audiences ..."

"And in his thoughts are the knowledge of what I did. So if I'm in the audience .. ." His smile grew broader.

The Chimera stood stock-still, as if stunned. Then it began to shrink. Evidently the icon was no longer the center of the mass-mind's attention. The Eleemosynary Composition was consumed with higher-priority thought.

Phaethon was wreathed in smiles. He said, "Maybe Nebuchednezzar refused to advise the Hortators because what they planned was so stupid. So self-defeating. The Peers could not resist the temptation to open their forbidden memories. After all, you had to know what it was that I had done in order to defend against it, didn't you? In order to prevent me from stumbling across it again, didn't you?

"If all of you redact your memories again, in time to hide all your thoughts before December, then I'll have a free hand, unobserved, unopposed, to continue to investigate my past. There's plenty of evidence floating around, including records which cannot legally be edited or altered, such as finance records or property contracts. If I spent my fortune, there must be a record about what I spent it to buy.

"You can make me forget what I did. But you cannot make it so that it never had happened. That's the whole paradox of lies, isn't it? The problem is that, ultimately, every part of reality is logically connected to every other part. As long as I do not cooperate in my own self-deception, then you cannot lie to me, and reject one part of reality, without trying to reject all of reality."

Phaethon, seeing the perplexity of the Chimera, had to laugh aloud. "No wonder my past version had not been fright-

ened by this horrible amnesia Agreement! Its downfall is inevitable, like the downfall of every system not based on reality. My victory is and has always been assured. All I have to do is wait until December, and not open the box."

The Chimera said, "Your plan sounds logical."

"Thank you."

"But logic is not paramount in human affairs."

Phaethon uttered a noise, half snort, half laugh. "It is from hearing comments like that one, sir, that I derive that certainty of mine which was puzzling you earlier. Logic is paramount in all things."

"Then why did your earlier self consent to the Lakshmi Agreement? If the dangerous project which so obsessed you had actually been your highest concern, you would not have agreed. You speculate that your earlier self had been relying on the December Transcendence to return the lost memories. Your memories are gone for eighteen or nineteen months. But why?"

Phaethon frowned, displeased. "Perhaps I merely needed a vacation, or—"

"You were hoping to avoid the penalties imposed by the Hortators for your negligent behavior. You thought you could deceive them into forgetting your offenses for a time. Isn't this the same type of deception you have just condemned as illogical?"

"Well, I..." (What had his earlier self been intending, anyway?)

"Does anything prevent the College of Hortators, once they recall your negligence, from publicly condemning the same project they condemned before, and for the same reasons? No, Phaethon, you pretend you are an isolated individual, separate from the world, from society, and able to defy them. But when that separation became a reality, it was you, you Phaethon, who could not accept what that reality was."

"What do you mean?!"

"It was you who drove your wife to enter a permanent delirium tantamount to suicide."

"No! I cannot accept that!"

"An odd comment! It must be assumed you do not mean to reject reality, since you have criticized those who do so heavily." There was a gentle irony to the human head's tone. The eagle head spoke loudly: "Does this mean there is a plan for recovering your wife?!" The cobra head was quiet: "The Eleemosynary Composition is not without sympathy. We are also not without resources."

Phaethon grew very still. He spoke in soft, leaden tones: "What are you implying ... ?"

"This is a cruel and callous society in which we live. Those who cannot pay their housing bills are thrown into the streets. Recorded minds of any type who cannot pay the rentals on their computer brain space are deleted. Those who are trapped permanently in the dreamscapes, who cannot pay the fees that service requires, are cut off, and ejected into reality.

"The Eleemosynary Composition offers to manipulate the stock market by altering the buying habits of that percent of the population which comprises our membership, and by using negotiation, buyouts, and other financial maneuvers to either buy the companies in which Daphne's stock has been invested, or to ruin the values of those stocks. The Even-ingstar Sophotech is serving as investment broker for Daphne; an entity very smart and very accomplished in other fields, but utterly lacking the resources which the Seven Peers can bring to bear."

It was true. Just in terms of consumer goods alone, the Eleemosynary Composition controlled about one-tenth of the human world gross industrial product.

The Chimera said, "Once Daphne's stock is bankrupt, Ev-eningstar will eject her from her dream coffin and into the real world. She will be utterly unable to cope with a reality she has redacted from all memory. She may not be legally competent to govern her own affairs. By virtue of your marriage communion circuit, you hold join copyright ownership on certain of her intellectual properties, including her personality template. At that point, you may be legally able to insert a temporary memory block to redact all recent memories and personality changes; this would not be a personality-edit or

alteration. She would simply be restored to the condition she was in before she decided to commit delusion-suicide. She will have the legal right, once she is sane again, to open her redacted memories, and let herself go insane again. But you will be present. You will have an opportunity to persuade her to live in reality."

Phaethon said nothing. His eyes were wide.

The Chimera said, "Your forgotten project is not the most important thing in life to you. If you agree to cease all investigations into your past, the Eleemosynary Composition will aid you in the fashion we have outlined to recover your wife back to reality and sanity. You should agree not only because you personally shall receive the benefit of her love and gratitude, once she is restored; but also because it is your duty. You are her husband. Your marriage oath requires that you save her.

"You may call the Eleemosynary exchange from any public annex. We will leave you to meditate upon your answer."

And the Chimera vanished.

THE GOLDEN DOORS

Was it cowardice or prudence that made him hesitate? One impulse was to rush to the nearest Eleemosynary agency and throw himself down, begging, weeping, instantly agreeing to anything and everything it took to recover his wife from her horrible exile, her living death of permanent delusion.

Another impulse, more cautious, told him to investigate further.

Certainly the Eleemosynary Composition had not lied. It was true that, these days, very few people (aside from Nep-tunians) ever even attempted to lie; it was altogether too easy to get caught by all-knowing Sophotechs, too easy for honest men to confirm their statements by public display of their thought records. But it was also true that people could be mistaken, or could indulge in exaggerated (but honest) judgments of relative worth. The Eleemosynary Composition, for example, might judge something to be "difficult" or "impossible" which was not.

Was it impossible for Phaethon to wake his dream-trapped wife? Impossible?

He had to be certain. He had to see for himself.

Phaethon reached for the yellow disk icon floating in the glass of the table surface, the communication channel. It

should take only a moment to telepresent himself to the Ev-eningstar Sophotech who had custody of his wife's body. But he did not wish to be further observed; all this prying into his life was beginning to annoy him. Even as he reached, with his other hand he gestured the balcony window closed. Immediately, a panel was covering the view, and the sound and light and movement from outside was shut off.

Phaethon froze, startled. It was suddenly silent, with the total and absolute silence of a vacuum. The panels had not slid or moved to shut; one moment they were not there; the next they were in place. There was no hint or whisper of noise from beyond the panels, such as a Silver-Gray scene would have provided, to maintain the illusion of three dimensions and of consistency of objects.

Phaethon's hand was near the table surface. Still he hesitated.

"Rhadamanthus, why am I hesitating? What am I thinking?" He asked the question aloud before he remembered that he was disconnected from the Rhadamanthine system. (Had he been connected, he would not have forgotten, even for a moment.)

There was an icon for a Noetic self-consideration circuit in the tabletop. It was a crude, old-fashioned model, weeks or months out of date. But Phaethon thought that if he could clean a room manually, he could clean his nervous system of emotional maladjustments manually.

He touched the icon. Another, smaller window, like a tabletop, opened in the unsupported midair to his left. The new window was lit with the colors, dots and grids of standard psychometric iconography. He saw that his tension levels were high; grief and rancor were burning like a fire in a coal mine, sullen, just below the surface of his thoughts; and the temptation simply to give in to the Eleemosynary's bargain, to have someone or something else solve this problem for him, was very high.

The short-term emotional association index was carrying an image from the dream consciousness in his hypothalamus. He reached into the surface of the window, and through it, to

open the index box and look at the image list.

There it was. He was associating the sudden silence of the closed balcony with being trapped in a coffin, the airtight lid slamming shut, inescapable. A second association led to another dream image; that of his wife being locked in a coffin, still alive but asleep, her eyes moving beneath their lids. And, from another branch, a third image led away: the sound from outside had been shut off, not like a door closing but like a communication link being turned off. Which, in fact, it was. Phaethon discovered that this was the unconscious thought that was making him uneasy. Uneasy, because he realized that he actually was in a sort of a casket, namely, in a public hospice telepresence box.

If he did not go to visit his wife in person, there would be a signal going from his brain to some mannequin or remote, and back again. That signal time would have to be bought with Helion's money, and the signal content might be recorded.

Or distorted? Or edited? If and only if he went in person, and saw her with his own eyes, could he be sure the signals entering his brain were unedited.

What if this forgotten Lakshmi Agreement had put sense-filters on public channels to forbid Phaethon from seeing certain objects? (It had happened to him at Destiny Lake; he almost had not seen the Observationist School astronomer who told him about Helion's solar disaster.)

With the index open, Phaethon saw his tension levels jump again. Evidently thoughts about Helion were, at this moment, very upsetting to him. Upsetting, because he really did not know whether the version of Helion who was still alive was his Helion.

Should he be in mourning over a dead father, grief-stricken? Or should he be laughing with exasperation because a mistake of minor protocol, some fluke of overly zealous law, was trying to cheat Helion out of his entire fortune? There was only an hour missing from the present Helion's memory: that hardly constituted enough change to consider him a new and separate person, no matter what the law said.

Phaethon saw in the remote section of the index what he was really thinking, deep down. He wanted to talk to Helion about his problems.

He wanted fatherly advice and support.

From the bottom of the index box, where links to deeper brain sections glimmered like strands of smoke, came an image from memory.

The picture was this: Helion, dressed in armor white as ice, with a dark gorget covering his throat and shoulders, stood proud and tall on stairs of blue lapis lazuli. Behind him rose doors of burnished gold, tall and shining, inset with panels of black marble. The panels were carved with eight symbols of the rights and duties of manhood: a sheathed sword, an open book, a sheaf of ripe grain, a bundle of rods containing an ax, a cogwheel, a floral wedding trellis, a stork, a Gnostic eye.

Phaethon remembered those doors well. These symbols represented the right and duty of self-defense, freedom from censorship and the duty to learn, the obligation to labor and the right to keep the fruits thereof, civil rights and civic duties, and the rights and duties associated with cybernetic progress, sexual alliances, reproduction, and self-mutagenesis.

Those who passed through those doors, and passed the Noetic philosophic and psychiatric integration of their memory paths and thought chains, were recorded as full members of the Rhadamanthine mind structure, granted communion and ascendance. While they might have been voting adults in the eyes of the law and of the Parliament long before, the scholum of the manor-born did not accept that a child was fully adult until he was proven to be fully sane and honest. That took longer.

On the day when he had turned five-and-seventy years of age, Phaethon had reached his majority.

He and Helion had been staying on Europa at the time,

negotiating some last details of the Circumjovial Moon effort. The ceremony had been somewhat rough and impromptu, but no less stirring to Phaethon for all that. Helion's Lieutenants and the High Vavasors of Rhadamanth had radioed updated copies of themselves across the solar system to be present; the copies could be later reintegrated with the primary memories, to create the illusion that Helion's friends, employees and allies had attended. The palace they used had been grown overnight out of smart-crystal, not properly adjusted for Europa's light gravity, so that the spires and towers emerged as elongated fairy shapes, lacy and fantastic; irregularities were masked with morphetic illusions or pseudo-matter. There had been no Yule tree, so the gifts were recorded on disks and ornaments hanging from a squat detoxification bush one of Phaethon's remotes found in their drop-ship. And there had not been enough time to give the chorus properly thought-out pseudo-personalities for the comic reenactments of Phaethon's youth which traditionally preceded the Noetic submergence ceremony, so Helion had peopled the play stages with characters from popular novels, Jovian history, and ancient myth, and whomever else he could find cheaply on the local area channels. The reenactments, normally austere with a restrained dry wit, turned into bizarre, anachronistic buffoonery. Phaethon loved it nonetheless, every minute.

In his memory, he saw once again how Helion had looked as he stood before the golden doors of the submergence chamber. The semi-Helions, his partials, had bowed and stepped aside, and there was Helion himself, the original, standing on the stairs, gleaming in his white armor. (This armor, at that point, was still an extrapolation; completion of the Solar Array project was still five hundred years in the future. No one really knew what architecture of interfaces would have to be built into such armor, or what the solar deep-station environment would be like.)

Helion had put one hand on Phaethon's shoulder and, with his other hand, had stopped the official count of time. The partials and computer-generated people around them froze.

Helion had leaned and said, "Son, once you go in there, the full powers and total command structures of the Rhadamanth Sophotech will be at your command. You will be invested with godlike powers; but you will still have the passions and distempers of a merely human spirit. There are two temptations which will threaten you. First, you will be tempted to remove your human weaknesses by abrupt mental surgery. The Invariants do this, and to a lesser degree, so do the White Manorials, abandoning humanity to escape from pain. Second, you will be tempted to indulge your human weakness. The Cacophiles do this, and, to a lesser degree, so do the Black Manorials. Our society will gladly feed every sin and vice and impulse you might have; and then stand by helplessly and watch as you destroy yourself; because the first law of the Golden Oecumene is that no peaceful activity is forbidden. Free men may freely harm themselves, provided only that it is only themselves that they harm."

Phaethon knew what his sire was intimating, but he did not let himself feel irritated. Not today. Today was the day of his majority, his emancipation; today, he could forgive even He-lion's incessant, nagging fears.

Phaethon also knew that most Rhadamanthines were not permitted to face the Noetic tests until they were octogener-ians; most did not pass on their first attempt, or even their second. Many folk were not trusted with the full powers of an adult until they reached their Centennial. Helion, despite criticism from the other Silver-Gray branches, was permitting Phaethon to face the tests five years early. Phaethon had been more than pleased to win his sire's validation and support; but now, perhaps, Helion was wondering if his critics after all had been correct.

"Are you suggesting I sign a Werewolf Contract, Father?" A Werewolf Contract appointed someone with an override, and authorized them to use force, if necessary, to keep the subscribing party away from addictions, bad nanomachines, bad dreams, or other self-imposed mental alterations. (The actual legal term for this document was "a Confessed Judg-

ment of Conditional Mental Incompetence and Appointment of Guardian.")

"I am not suggesting that," said Helion, "but, now that you bring it up ... have you thought about it? Perhaps you ought. Many eminent people, well respected in their communities, have signed such things. No one else need know." But he looked down when he said it, unable to meet Phaethon's gaze.

"Are you thinking of signing such a thing, Father?" Phaethon asked with a wry half smile.

Helion straightened up, his eyes bright, glaring down at Phaethon. Helion said nothing, but there was such a look of august majesty, of haughty pride, shining in his face, that there was no need to say anything.

Phaethon let his smile inch wider, and he spread his hands, and quirking one eyebrow, as if to say, So you see?

Then Phaethon said, "It's a paradox, Father. I cannot be, at the same time and in the same sense, a child and an adult. And, if I am an adult, I cannot be, at the same time, free to make my own successes, but not free to make my own mistakes."

Helion looked sardonic. " 'Mistake' is such a simple word. An adult who suffers a moment of foolishness or anger, one rash moment, has time enough to delete or destroy his own free will, memory, or judgment. No one is allowed to force a cure on him. No one can restore his sanity against his will. And so we all stand quietly by, with folded hands and cold eyes, and meekly watch good men annihilate themselves. It is somewhat... quaint... to call such a horrifying disaster a 'mistake.' "

Phaethon said, "If fools wish to abuse their freedom, let them. So long as they only harm themselves, who cares?"

Helion said, "Aha. Proudly spoken. But what human is entirely immune from foolishness?"

Phaethon was impatient to continue the ceremony and step beyond those golden doors. He shrugged, and said, "The So-photechs are unimaginably wise! We can trust their advice to protect us."

"Are they, indeed?" Helion looked very displeased. "Did I

ever tell you what happened to Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray? He and I were friends once. We were closer than friends. We entered a communion exchange."

Against his will, Phaethon was interested. "Sir? I thought you and he were political rivals. Enemies."

"You are thinking of Hyacinth Sistine. This was another version of his, but a close alternate. What these days would be called a parallel-first close-order brother, emancipated non-partial ... though we did not use that terminology at the time."

"What did you call brothers back then?"

"Real-time clones."

Phaethon snorted. "Well, no one ever accused people from the Second Immortality period of being overly romantic!"

"Indeed," said Helion with a small, ironic smile. "Which was why I founded the Romanticism movement among the manorial schools. It wasn't called the Consensus Aesthetic back then, because there was no consensus and no standard forms. But Orpheus Prime Avernus—who fancied himself a poet, as you can tell from his name—had come out very strongly in favor of the return to classical themes and images. He wasn't called a Peer back then, because there was only one of him, and he had no peers." (Phaethon knew Helion had named himself, following that same classical myth tradition the Orphic movement had resurrected.)

"No peers? The Eleemosynary Composition was around at that time."

"But held in contempt by public opinion. You probably don't remember—-recorded lives from that time usually don't get posted on the apprentice net or educational channels— that the Eleemosynary Composition at that time was a fervid opponent of the Noumenal technology. And with good reason. Subscription to the Compositions dropped almost to nothing after Orpheus opened his first bank. People would rather be immortal—truly immortal, themselves, as individuals—rather than be a recording in a mass-mind. The Compositions might call it immortality, or 'First Immortality,' but without the Noumenal mathematics, without the ability to

capture the self-aware and self-defining part of your soul, all Composition recording is, in reality, is other people pretending they are you, or playing out your old thoughts, after you die. Like a playactor reading a diary."

"What about Vafnir? Surely he was a peer."

"Vafnir was alive, but he wasn't human. He had built himself into the power station at Mercury Equilateral. The whole damn station was his body. He was rich, but everyone deemed him a lunatic." Helion smiled at the memory. "It was a wild age, an age of reckless daring and of high delights, of symphonies and storms of light. We all thought we could not die, and the elation from Orpheus's breakthrough sang in our souls like summer wine.... Ah. Anyway, where was I... ?"

Phaethon realized that Helion must have their local, rented version of Rhadamanthus off-line; otherwise he would not have forgotten his place in his speech.

The Jovian system Sophotechs did not adhere to as strict a protocol of proprietary information as did Earthly ones, and disconnecting was the only way to be sure a conversation was not being recorded. Helion must have regarded what he had to say as important, or, at least, as worthy of privacy.

"You were about to tell me some cautionary tale to horrify me into refusing the risks of adulthood, I believe, sir."

"Don't be impertinent, boy."

"I thought you liked impertinence, old man?"

"Only in moderation. Let me tell you about Hyacinth and me."

Phaethon did not want to hear a long story. "Am I right in guessing that Hyacinth Sistine hates you because of whatever you are going to tell me about Hyacinth Septimus?"

Helion nodded grimly.

Phaethon said, "You said his name was Hyacinth-Subhelion. You swapped personalities with him?"

"We lived each other's lives for a year and a day."

"And he refused to change back once the year was up. He thought he was you."

Helion nodded again.

"But, Father! Father! How could you be so stupid!"

Helion sighed, and stared up at the ceiling. 'To be quite honest, Phaethon, I don't know if I was as bright, when I was your age, as you are now."

Phaethon was shaking his head in disbelief. "But didn't you think about the consequences ... ?"

Helion brought his eyes back down. "We were very close. He and I thought we could work together better if we really understood each other. And, in that day and age, absurd things seemed possible, even inevitable. It was an exciting time. We were all drunk with our new-found immortality, I suppose, and thought we were invincible. We thought we could simply resist the lure to stay in each other's personality."

"But mind swaps like that are against Silver-Gray doctrine!"

"You forget to whom you speak, young man. I wrote that doctrine because of this event. Don't you relive your history texts? Ever?"

In his youth, Phaethon had always found history tedious. He was more interested in the future than the past. He was particularly interested, at the moment, in his own personal future. He looked at the golden doors in an agony of impatience. "Please continue with your fascinating story, Father. I am most eager to hear the end."

"Very funny. I will be brief; for it is not a tale I care to dwell on. Back when there was only the White Manorial School and the Black, Hyacinth and I combined forces to create a compromise school, taking the best from both doctrines, the artistic appeal of the Black Mansions and the in-tellectualism and discipline of the Whites. He provided the inspiration and logic; I provided funds and determination. The mind-swap gave us each the strengths and virtues of the other. Together, we converted the skeptics and conquered a million markets.

"But then when the year and a day had passed, we both claimed my property and estates. After all, both of us remembered doing the two hundred years of hard work which had gone into earning it. To settle the quarrel, we both agreed to abide by whatever the Hortators might decide."

"You had the College of Hortators way back then when you were young?"

Helion squinted with impatient humor. "Yes. It was after the invention of fire but before that newfangled wheel contraption. I should tell you about when we domesticated the dog, put a man on the moon, and solved the universal field theorem. Should I continue? I'm trying to make a point."

"Sorry, sir. Please continue."

"When the Hortators declared him to be the copy, he refused to accept it. He entered a dreamscape simulation that allowed him to pretend he had won the case. He rewrote his memory, and ordered his sense-filter to edit out any contrary evidence. He continued to live as Helion Prime. He did thought-for-hire and data patterning, and was able to sell his routines out in the real world. He made enough to pay for his dreamspace rental. That worked for a while. But when self-patterning overroutines became standard, his subscriptions ran out, and he was kicked out into the real world.

"But it did not end there. If the Sophotechs had only allowed someone to erase just the sections of his memory when he thought he was me, he would have been his old self, awake, oriented and sane, in a moment or two. But the Sophotechs said it could not be done without his permission. But how could he give his permission? He would not listen to anyone who tried to tell him who he was.

"Instead, he sued me again, and accused me of stealing his life. He lost again. He could not afford enough to hire a So-photech to give him job-seeking advice, and he could not find other work. The other Hyacinthines, Quintine and Quatrine and Sistine, gave him some charity for a while, but he just spent it again to buy false memories. Eventually, to save on money, he sold his body, and downloaded entirely into a slow-process, low-rent section of the Mentality. Of course, illusions are easier for pure minds to buy, because there is no wire-to-nerve transition."

"Wouldn't that also have made it easier for him to find work? Pure minds can go anywhere the mentality network reaches."

"But he didn't find new work. He merely created the illusion that he was working. He wrote himself false memories telling himself that he was making enough to live on."

Helion stared at the ground for a moment, brooding. He spoke softly. "Then he sold his extra lives, one after another. All seven. A Noumenal backup takes up a lot of expensive computer time.

"Then he sold his structure models. He probably figured that he did not need an imitation of a thalamus or hypothal-amus any longer, since he had no glands and no dreams, probably did not need a structure to mimic the actions of pain and pleasure centers, parasympathetic reactions, sexual responses, and so on.

"Then, to save space, he began selling memory and intelligence. Every time I came on-line to speak with him, he was stupider; he had forgotten more. But he still kept altering his simulation, making himself forget that either he or anyone else had ever been smarter than the slow-witted brute he was now."

Phaethon asked, "Father? You still went to see him ... ?"

Helion wore as stern a look as Phaethon had ever seen on his face. "Of course. He was my best friend."

"What happened.? I assume he ... Did he die?"

"It dragged on and on. Toward the end, both he and the world he had made were colorless cartoons, flat, jerky, and slow. He had been so brilliant once, so high-hearted and fine. Now he was not able even to concentrate long enough to follow a simple multistructural logic-tree when I tried to reason with him. And I tried.

"But he kept telling himself that I was the one who was hallucinating, me, not him, and the reason why he could not understand me was that his thoughts were on so much higher a plane than mine. And whom else could he ask? All the black-and-white puppets he had made around him nodded and agreed with him; he had forgotten there was an outside world.

"I was there when it happened. He became more and more intermittent, and fell below threshold levels. One moment he

was a living soul, closer to me than a brother. The next, he was a recording.

"Even at the end, at the very last moment, he did not know he was about to die. He still thought that he was Helion, healthy, wealthy, well-loved Helion. All the evidences of his sense, all his memories, told him how fortunate and happy his life was. He was not hungry, not in pain. How could he know or guess he was about to die? All our attempts to tell him so were blocked by his sense-filter...."

Helion's face was gray with grief.

Then he said, "And the thought, the horrid thought which ever haunts me is this: What of us, when we think we are happy, healthy, alive? When we think we know who we are?"

It was Phaethon who eventually broke the heavy silence.

"Did you try to pay his bills? It would have kept him alive."

Helion's expression hardened. He folded his hands behind his back and looked down at Phaethon. He spoke in a grim and quiet voice: "I would have done so gladly, had he agreed to shut off his false memories. He would not agree. And I was not going to pay for the illusions which were killing him."

Phaethon glanced longingly at the golden doors. He already had a dozen plans in mind for what to do with his newfound freedoms and powers once he passed the examinations. But his sire was still blocking the way, grave and somber, as if expecting some sort of response. The official count of time was still frozen, and the scene around them was peopled as if with statues.

What reply was his sire expecting? Nothing in Phaethon's life heretofore had been particularly sad or difficult. He had no comment to give, no thoughts about Helion's story. Somewhat at a loss, he said, "Well. It must have been very ... ah ... unpleasant for you."

"Mm. It must have been," said Helion sardonically. His gaze was level and expressionless; a look of disappointment.

Phaethon felt impatience transmuting into anger. "What do you want me to say? I'm not going to shed tears just because

some self-destructive man managed to destroy himself! It won't happen to me."

Helion was very displeased. He spoke in a voice heavy with sarcasm: "No one expects you to shed tears, Phaethon. He wasn't your best friend in the world, the only one who stood by you when everyone else, even your own family, mocked and scorned you. No, you did not even know him. No one weeps over the deaths of strangers, no matter how lingering, horrible, cruel, and grotesque that death is, now do they?"

"You don't think I'm going to end up like your friend, do you? I'd never play games with my memories like that."

"Then why seek out the right to do so?"

"Oh, come now! You cannot expect me to be afraid to live my life! You would not act that way; why do you think I would?!"

"I wouldn't? Perhaps you should not be so sure, my son. Hyacinthus thought he was me when he did it; those were my thoughts, my memories, which guided him. During the Hortator's Inquiry, when I thought I was him, I desperately wanted to be me. I would have walked through fire to be Helion; I would have died a thousand deaths rather than lose my self. It would have destroyed me to lose that case, to lose the right to think my thoughts, or lose the copyrights on my memories. What would I have done if I had lost? Well, I know what he did, and he was another version of me, wasn't he?"

"But it won't happen to me, Father!" said Phaethon, irritated. "I won't ignore the advice of the Sophotechs—"

"You don't see the point of my story. I did listen to the Sophotechs. They could not help. They would not break the law, would not interfere. They care more for their integrity than for human suffering; their logic is deaf to pleas for pity. If the Sophotechs had their way, we would all be Invariants, unemotional and perfect with a cold and dead perfection. The Silver-Gray School is but one way to preserve our human nature from the subtle dangers which menace us from every side."

Phaethon, who thought of Helion as the most traditional of traditionalists, suddenly realized that Helion thought of himself as a rebel, as a radical, as a crusader bent on altering society.

It was a very strange thing to think about one's own father.

Phaethon asked: "Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhad-amanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!"

"Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit."

"Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?"

"Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us."

Phaethon suddenly understood why Helion had always supported the College of Hortators, even when they made poor decisions. The Hortators had saved Helion's identity from Hyacinth, and had restored it to him.

But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. "Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?"

"Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when they do, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are all-powerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself.

"You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you."

Helion turned and pointed toward the doors. "There is your heritage; now I step aside. But if you feel in any way unready or unfit, then do not go in." And, at his gesture, the count of time began again.

Was he ready? Phaethon had never let doubt enter his mind; he went up the stairs with a dancer's quickness. As he paused with his hand on the panels of the door, he thought with fierce certainty: I won't be like my father was. I would save my friends if they were drowning, law or no law. I would find a way.

Beyond the door was a wide dark, solemn space, with an examination pool shining like a silver eye in the gloom before him....

Phaethon had been irked by the exchange with Helion. He had always promised himself he would redact the unrecorded conversation, so that his memories of his graduation and rite of passage would be a memory of gold, a perfect day, untarnished by Helion's sarcasm and doubts. Didn't he have a right, if that was the way he wanted to remember it?

But, somehow, Phaethon had never gotten around to redacting the memory, and, eventually realized he would not and should not. The irritation had been real, part of the event, part of him, and part of his life. Falsifying the event would have made the event false, and part of him false.

So he kept the memory. He had not even stored it in archive, but kept it in his head.

With his arm still buried up to his elbow in the two-dimensional screen of the self-consideration circuit, Phaethon took his hand off of the index box. He had seen the memory that had made him hesitate. It was a warning from his past; Helion had told him not to trust the Sophotechs, that the machine intelligences would not protect his life from fear and sorrow. Instead, Helion had urged him to trust the Hortators, the guardians of the conscience of society. ,

Phaethon could see the pale light indicating his desire for Helion's help dim and ebb away. But the Sophotechs would help him. Hadn't Monomarchos solved a seemingly impossible problem? Any problem could be solved, as long as the problem solver were intelligent enough.

As for trusting the Hortators, they were the ones who had somehow gotten Phaethon to butcher his own memory. To

forget his drowned wife. They would be no help; if anything, they were his rivals.

Should he go in person to the place where his wife's body was kept? Phaethon could see the red line indicating his fear levels, rising and rising, forming what psychometric analysts called a catastrophe bubble. In a moment, fear would make him do something unwise, such as telepresenting himself to where his wife lay, when he knew he should go in person. How to head off this growing fear?

Phaethon, leaning into the surface, plunged in his arm up to his shoulder, so that he could reach the deep-structure connections feeding into his emotion/action core. He turned his pride reading up to the maximum recommended level.

Suddenly he was invincible. Was he not Phaethon? The mere fact that he inspired such fear in the Hortators was a sign of his power, power enough to sweep aside any obstacles that might dare to confront him. He had spun worlds and moons into new orbits; he had done miracles before this; to save his wife from the cobwebs of delusion could not be so impossible a task!

With great satisfaction he saw his fear levels deflate. But the emotion grid now showed another catastrophe bubble beginning to form, this one a response to mounting impatience. The same high pride that disdained all thought of fear would not allow him to wait the hours or days it would take to ship his physical body to the Eveningstar Sophotech Housing where, no doubt, Daphne Prime was resting. Besides, to rent j a vehicle would require him to draw money from Helion's account, and give Helion plenty of warning, and perhaps time to interfere.

Whereas, on the other hand, the very reason why the manorial movement had gotten started in the first place was that telepresentation was quicker and less expensive than lugging | a physical body around everywhere.

A gesture at the communication icon was sufficient to make a connection. A moment later he woke up in another scene.

THE COFFIN

Phaethon found himself in a chair of pale wood, ornamented with scrollwork, next to a small table holding a lily vase, a pomander, and a figment-case made of brass. A rug of white and pigeon-blue was underfoot. Before him, embraced by two funeral urns, was a doorway leading to a hall of dark green marble.

This hall was filled with shadows, striped with bands of pale, soft light, so details were not clear. But he had the impression there were large square stones, perhaps columns, to the right of the hall, reaching high to the cathedral ceiling.

Mauve-tinted sunlight streaming in through tall stained-glass windows to his left fell across his face, producing a sensation of velvet warmth and melancholy pleasure. When he stood, he could feel the muted sunlight slide across his cheek like a caress.

He stood, surprised to find himself represented as wearing his armor of black and gold-admantium. His helmet and gauntlets were retracted, so that his face and hands were exposed. The texture of the air as he breathed produced a gentle and powerful delight, like wine, in his mouth, nose and lungs. The simple objects his eye fell upon, the chair, the white lilies, the dark marble luster of the hall beyond the door, all these things seemed charged with a wonder and sad beauty he could not name.

The touch of the chair arms on his palms as he leaned

forward to stand, the hint of fragrance from the lilies, sent a mild thrill of ecstasy through him, but the pleasure was fragile, and transitory. As he stood, in the distance, he heard or thought he heard the trembling, low echoes of a gong, which almost brought tears to his eyes, so plaintive and mournful was the note. Like a tingle on his skin (another transitory pleasure) he felt the sound wave ripple over him.

Phaethon was not unfamiliar with this style of dreamscape; it was typical of the Red Manorial group (to which Daphne had once belonged) to exaggerate the sensual sensations. Red protocols allowed the introduction of new sense impressions (such as, for example, an ability to feel the texture of sunlight, or of gong notes) that had no counterpart in reality.

He was not sure if he was in Surface Dreaming, in which case all the objects around him had real-world counterparts, or if he was partway into the Middle Dreaming, which allowed the thought-environment to project additional information into his memory. Silver-Gray and White sense-filters were normally tuned to exclude anything other than information from being inserted through Middle Dreaming channels; but the Reds allowed emotions, conclusions, and states of mind to be altered by information fields attached to sense-objects, like a type of psychic aura, as if hints and colors of childhood memories were being stirred deep within him, reminders of other lives, perhaps, or of forgotten dreams.

The gong had summoned something. Phaethon could feel a Presence, a pressure on the wine-sweet gloom of the air, a thrill in his nerves that sent his heart beating in his throat. In the distance, down the hall, hovering above its reflection in the dark green marble floor, came a figure of silver, bright within the gloom.

She was something like a butterfly, or an angel, a shape of subtle lacy lights. Like a queen she came foreword, with solemn music trembling in the floor before her as she came. Her face was grave and remote, solemn, sweet and sad, with ancient wisdom deep within her eyes. On her brow was bound a pale star.

Phaethon stepped forward, one hand before his face to

guard his eyes. It was not that the light was bright, it was that it was so beautiful and holy that the sight was sending shivers of pleasure through him, as if each silver ray were a sword. He crossed the threshold, and heard his golden boots chime on the marble, a lovely sound. As he turned his head away from that too-beautiful light, he saw that the columns to the right embraced a mausoleum.

Here were a dozen caskets of dark crystal, half-upright, projecting from the far wall, like cocoons of living diamond set in marble housings. All but one of the surface of the caskets were polarized against him; all but one were velvet-black; but one was clear, the color of pellucid arctic water. Inside was Daphne. A single ray of light touched her face and shoulders; the rest of her body was obscured by gloom and filmy cloud trapped in the casket surface.

The Presence approached; silver light caressed Phaethon even through his armor; a sense of awe and mystery and sorrow beat inside his body like a second heart. The emotion was more than he could tolerate; he sank to one knee, his hands still before his face, tears streaming. The kneecap of his armor chimed against the stone, a ghost of sound.

He called out: "I am Phaethon, scion of Helion, of the House of Rhadamanth. I am come to demand the restoration of my wife. Deny me at your peril! I would speak with Ev-eningstar."

The presence spoke in a voice like a harp: "Eveningstar is before you. We know who you are. Weep, Phaethon, for your wishes shall not prevail."

A stab of melancholy lanced his heart at those words; he knew their certainty and truth.

Or did he? "You are manipulating my nervous system. Stop at once. I am of the Silver-Gray; politeness demands that you abide by my protocols."

In the time it took for his heartbeat to slow, and for him to wipe his tears and rise to his feet, the chamber around him faded in vividness. There was still a marble floor, and gloomy caskets of diamond, tall pillars, and muted sunlight; but the textures no longer trembled with melancholy, the sunlight

could only be seen, not felt, and the angelic form dwindled, became a woman dressed in silk evening gown the hue of deep twilight. A long train curved behind her in many satiny folds, and looped into her left hand. She still wore a coronet, and this crown bore a star sapphire on her brow, which was one of the heraldic symbols of the Eveningstar Sophotech.

But the rest of the scene remained the same. Daphne was indeed here, locked in a coffin of spun diamond, asleep, a look of peace on her face.

The Sophotech image said in a soft voice: "Forgive any impoliteness; since you project yourself here from an Eleemosynary public basic-casket, and do not have Rhadamanthus with you, there was no one to translate our dreamscape to your format. We are not required to reorganize to your preference. Nonetheless, we do so out of a sense of charity and good fellowship; the expense, while small for us, is more than you can bear. You have troubles enough to endure."

Phaethon was not listening. He stepped over to that casket, and stood with his hand on the glassy surface. There, two inches below his hand, was the quiet face of his wife. He had seen that face so often, with so many moods and thoughts and emotions on her features. It seemed strange and impossible to see her so still. It was only two inches, a few microns of diamond, an inch and a half of transparent nanomedical medium. Two inches.

"Wake her," said Phaethon. He was looking a Daphne's profile, at the way her lashes almost brushed her cheeks. He concentrated on the curve of her cheek, the delicacy of her nose, the sensitive fineness of her lips. Her skin was pale as a porcelain doll's; her hair a black cloud, floating in the liquid substance trapping her. "Phaethon knows we cannot do so." He spoke without turning. "Is there a hidden command or j contingency for waking her? She would have asked for you to wake her up if she knew I were here. She would have thought to put such a command in place before she did this to herself. I know she would have." "There is no such command."

Phaethon turned toward the queenly figure representing Eveningstar. "Wake her up for only a moment, so I can tell her I am here. If she wishes later to drown herself again and redact the memory, she may; but I must be given a chance to speak with her...."

"There is no provision in her living will for any such a waking, long or short."

"Generate an extrapolation from her memories and consult that for orders...."

"We had done so since the moment Phaethon appeared here; our extrapolated version of Daphne is crimson with rage and grief; her only instruction is to deliver a curse upon you for your treason, your betrayal of your marriage vows, your selfishness. We consider this to be an accurate representation of what Daphne Prime would say were she to wake. Would Phaethon care to hear the entire text of the message?"

Phaethon gritted his teeth. If he wanted to hear a copy of his wife, he could have stayed with the Daphne doll, or downloaded his own dreams from his marriage album's memory.

Besides, he had argued violently with his wife on many occasions in real life-—she never would come with him when he went to the Outer Solar System on long-term engineering projects. To he.ar a mere ghost or reconstruction berating him in her voice, copying her words, while he stood above her coffin, would have destroyed him. "I do not care to hear the text, thank you ... but you must tell me if there is an explanation for this—for what she has done to herself. What is the reason for this—this horrible—for—" Phaethon found he could not speak.

"Our sorrow is great. Phaethon has fooiishly agreed, at Lakshmi, on Venus, where our parent system rests, not to be told this reason."

"Did she leave a message for me? She must have left a note. Everyone leaves a note."

"There is no note. A copy of her living will and all instructions are available for your examination." The figure seemed to produce a parchment, which she handed to Phaethon. When his fingers touched it, a circuit in the Middle Dreaming put

the text of Daphne's final instructions into his memory.

It was an accountancy program, and details about the disposition of her property while she slept. There was nothing about him; nothing about any provision, under any circumstances, which would allow him to wake her again. No one was listed as agent or attorney, aside from her own thought-properties in the Red Eveningstar. If there were words to wake his wife, only his wife knew them.

Many dreamers kept open a channel, so that outside messages, even if translated to fit into the background and story line of the dream universe, could somehow filter into the dream. He saw no evidence of any such provision here.

It was not clear from the document what program she was running. But the document held mention of a transitional end-program Daphne Prime had inflicted on herself: were she ever to wake again, a virus in her thoughts would continue to have her believe that reality was false, an hallucination or deception, and that the dreamworld was a higher or inner reality, whose certainty could never be questioned. The same sensations in brain chemistry that produced the sensation of distance, disbelief, and unreality one had, upon waking, of dream-memories, would be applied to any thoughts or memories she had about the real world.

This was a mind virus developed by the Red Manorials. Phaethon now knew why Daphne had come here to drown herself. No other mansion could allow one to destroy so thoroughly one's own sense of reality. Even if she were to wake up again, she would still be lost. The living provision specifically prohibited the unrequested removal of that mind virus.

"Why won't you let me save her?"

"If you may do so without violence, proceed. But her life is her own, to live or to destroy howsoever she sees fit."

"Why did she ... do this ... ? Why did she ..." And he could not force the words aloud. Why did she leave me ? Why did she betray me? Why didn't she love me as she should have done?

"You knew the answer at one time and have made yourself forget it. Phaethon has instructed us, at Lakshmi, not to an-

swer that question. Those instructions are still in force."

Phaethon's head had bowed forward till his forehead was resting against the cool glassy surface of the coffin. All he had to do was call Rhadamanthus and order the memory box to open. This horrible uncertainty, this battle with ghosts, would be over. He would suffer the Hortator's exile. But if Daphne, his Daphne, the woman who made his life into a heroic adventure, the woman who gave his life meaning, if she were gone, what use would the rest of his life do him?

Then he straightened up. He must refuse to surrender to despair. He would find a way. His pride was still running high.

"I am involved in a law case which requires that I prove my identity. I intend to subpoena her as a witness. No matter what her right to her privacy, she must answer a lawful subpoena."

"Phaethon may certainly apply for such a subpoena. If it is submitted to us, we will release her. However, we have run two thousand extrapolations of the outcome of such a request before the Curia, and all of them agree that you will not prevail."

"You cannot know that."

"Phaethon may hold to delusive hope if he wishes; we criticize nothing which gives you pleasure, provided the pleasure is true and lasting. But such hope will not last. The determinations of the Curia have been made as predictable as justice and policy permit, so that reasonable men will know to what standard to arrange their conduct. Determining the outcome of Curia decisions therefore is no different from determining the outcome of a game of tic-tac-toe or of chess; it may seem mysterious to Phaethon, but not to us. The Judges will conduct a Noetic examination and will see you intend the subpoena process only to invade the rights of your wife; her testimony will have no bearing whatever on the question of your identity, Helion's inheritance, or any of the other issues in the case."

Phaethon drew a breath and tried again. "I have a communion circuit giving me the right to examine her mental

activities. I ask that you open the channel to allow me to exercise this right; the right cannot be used while she is involved in a far dream ..."

When that argument failed, he tried another. And another and another.

Two hours later, his voice hoarse, Phaethon was standing with his cheek pressed against the glassy surface of the case, overwhelmed with weariness. His hands were clutching the corners of the casket.

"... her living will is not valid because ... it is based on the false premise that I... had done something to shock or offend her ... whether or not she left a provision for reawakening, since she would want to be woken at this point, were she to know I'm here ..."

In the third hour he tried simply begging, screaming, pleading threatening, bargaining, bribing. In the fourth hour he sat mute, unable to move or think. In the fifth hour, he convinced himself that there was a secret password or hidden command that Daphne had not told to Eveningstar, which would unlock the casket and end the dream in which she was trapped. He whispered every word of love or of endearment or apology he could imagine to her cold, still, silent face.

He talked about their past life together; about how they met; he asked her if she remembered their marriage ceremony; if she remembered their first honeymoon in the Antarctic Wintergardens, or their anniversary in the reconstructed version of Third Era Paris, or the time he had accidentally collapsed the pseudo-matter holding up the east wing of their nuptial house in reality, so that it no longer matched the version of their house in Mentality. He asked her about her pet horses, and her latest drama she was writing, and about her hopes for the future.

Then he said: "I'd like to be alone with her."

The image of the woman representing Eveningstar Sopho-tech nodded gravely, and, out of politeness to him, instead of vanishing, she turned and walked away. Every detail was correct; her shoes rang on the marble floor, diminishing as she receded, she cast a shadow when she passed through a pool

of mauve light, and highlights fled across the twilight blue texture of her silk gown.

It was very realistic; a Silver-Gray Sophotech could not have done better. Phaethon waited while she walked so very slowly away, and his impatience clawed and gnawed him.

Impatient, because his pride was still very strong within him, like a wildfire.

And because it only took a moment to enlarge his vision to embrace several different wavelengths and analytic routines. His private thoughtspace, once summoned, seemed to surround him with floating black icons, superimposed upon the real scene around him, with the spiral wheel of stars hovering in the background, beyond his wife's coffin. A gesture accessed the records he carried for biomedical manipulations, and compared it to the analysis he had just completed on the medical nanomachinery suspended in the liquids embracing his wife.

The molecular shapes of her medical nanomachinery were standardized; it would be easy to counteract it, and to affect a disconnect. The black lining of his armor could produce the required assemblers in a moment of heat.

Also in his private thoughtspace was an engineering routine, including a simple subprogram to estimate the strengths of structures. A second glance allowed him to analyze the coffin lid and conclude how many foot-pounds of pressure, applied at what angle, were sufficient to break the surface material without allowing any Shockwave to travel into the interior.

Phaethon shrugged. Gauntlets of golden admantium grew from his sleeves and embraced his hands. He raised his hand triumphantly, made a fist.

No wonder they were all afraid of him. Here was armor that could allow him to walk into the core of a star without harm. What weapon, what threat, what force could stop him, once he was resolved? The Golden Oecumene had witnessed no real crimes in decades; were there any structures still in place to detect or hinder such things?

The fire left his eyes at that point. His anger and pride

evaporated, and his face sagged into expressionless despair. Foolish. He knew how foolish he was being.

He brought his fist down nevertheless. An outside force seized his arm, and made him lay his hand gently on the casket lid, not hurting it.

No, not his arm. The mannequin's arm. He was merely telepresent in whatever mannequin had been sitting in the chair in the receiving room. The invulnerable armor that he seemed to wear existed only in his eyesight, an illusion created by Eveningstar out of politeness to him. Eveningstar had merely turned off the arm when he ordered it to slam downward.

A silver light, shivering with beams of pleasure, shining over his shoulders, and a sense of dread and sorrow, like a wash of pressure, told him that Eveningstar Sophotech had manifested her representative behind him. Her voice, like a glorious symphony, filled his ears. He could feel the words caressing his neck and cheeks. He could feel the tiny pinpricks, like sparks, in their stern firmness. The luster on the coffin lid was sad and fascinating; the shimmer of light on the golden intricacy of his finger joints was a ballet.

Evidently Eveningstar concluded it was no longer appropriate to be polite to him; his senses were filled with the Red Manorial version of the dreamscape.

The voice from behind him said, "Does Phaethon wish to introduce crime and violence once again into our peaceful civilization? There are many folk who wish to do far worse ills than merely burglary or invasion of privacy. Why should they restrain themselves when it seems that you do not?"

"I don't want to hear a lecture, Eveningstar." said Phaethon in a voice of endless weariness.

"Then should I summon the Constables for your arrest?" "I attempted no crime. I admit I thought about it when raised my fist. But as I was bringing it down, I realized that I could not succeed, since I was not here physically. The whole structure of the manor-born way of life prevents us from hurting each other; we're always safe. I suppose you may have me arrested if you like; I don't really care any more.

But kidnap and burglary and invasion are all crimes of specific intent; and I did not have that intent at the time."

"May we examine your mind to verify what your intent was at the moment you lowered your fist? ... I'm sorry, but a silent nod of the head is not a legally sufficient sign of consent."

"I swear it."

A large penguin dressed in a top hat from which a black mourning-scarf floated waddled from the receiving chamber into the hall. The Red Manorial protocol surrounded the Rhadamanthus image with such an atmosphere of undignified humor that it hurt Phaethon's eyes. He recoiled. But Rhadamanthus had to be on-line to conduct the Noetic reading.

Since Rhadamanthus was present, Phaethon adjusted his sense-filter to route through him. Phaethon blinked, and suddenly the scene was no longer throbbing and trembling with melancholic emotional overtones. Objects were bright and crisp and clear, even in the dim lighting; everything was sharp and well-defined, down to the trace of dust motes floating in the sunlight. Phaethon had frankly forgotten how clear and regular everything looked when viewed through Silver-Gray senses.

Eveningstar—now a woman again—looked at the penguin inquiringly. The penguin said: "Phaethon is telling the truth."

She said, "Will you share your data with me so that I may make an extrapolative model of Phaethon's mind. If, in my judgment, his grief and passion will prompt him to attempt criminal actions in the future, we shall certainly proceed by calling the Constabulary; but if this is a momentary aberration, an outcome of chaos mathematics, we will let the matter rest."

The penguin stroked its yellow bill with one fin, looking thoughtfully toward Phaethon. "Naturally, I can do so only with the young master's permission."

Phaethon said, "Cease this charade. I know your systems can interact much more swiftly than the time it would take to speak those words aloud in front of me. And yes, you have my permission; I have nothing to hide."

The Eveningstar representative nodded and vanished. Perhaps it was another small sign of impoliteness to show her displeasure, if displeasure, or indeed, any human emotion could be attributed to minds such as Eveningstar's. Or perhaps this was how she interpreted his request to "stop this charade."

Rhadamanthus said, "Eveningstar asked me to tell you that she will not be charging you with a crime to the Constabulary. She and I have discussed the matter at some length, and we both agree that you were acting quite out of character. I told her you were operating under the influence of an Eleemosynary self-consideration software routine which you found in a public casket, and that you had intoxicated yourself with vainglory." Rhadamanthus cocked one goggle eye at him. "And she could not overlook that this was just the type of direct emotional self-manipulation which Silver-Gray standards forbid. I told her you would probably not take such ill-considered actions again. But Eveningstar is going to expect some sort of apology or reparation from you. I assured her that you were a gentleman, and would live up to what was expected of you."

The condescension of it all rankled Phaethon. He had his back to the casket, facing Rhadamanthus, and he was glad his wife could not see this scene. "You Sophotechs treat us like children."

"No. We treat you like adults. Children can be forgiven without penalty, because they know no better."

"If I'm penniless, I can pay no reparations."

"Money does not enter into it, my dear Phaethon. She is asking for a gesture to show you are contrite, something unpleasant enough that you will feel a relief of your guilt and embarrassment."

"And if I refuse?"

"Why should you refuse? Young master, do you think you acted correctly?"

"I did not do anything wrong."

"Hm." The penguin rolled its goggle eyes, and slapped its webbed feet once or twice on the green marble floor. "You

did not do anything illegal, that is true. Not by a nice and precise reading of the letter of the law. But not everything which is wrong is illegal."

That phrase sobered Phaethon. He felt the last of whatever excess pride he had wished upon himself slip away. "Eveningstar is trying to keep me out of trouble with the Hortators, isn't she?"

The penguin nodded gravely. "Despite how large and varied the Oecumene population is, it would be an easy matter for the College of Hortators to post in the Middle Dreaming a memory, available to anyone who glanced at you, the way you let your anger get the better of you, the contempt you showed for civilized law, the foolishness of trying to use an Eveningstar-built mannequin to damage Eveningstar property. Most of the Oecumene schools are quite zealous in their support for Hortator-called boycotts."

"But why would she want to help me?"

"Eveningstar is aware, as I am, that the Earthmind spoke to you directly, and showed that She favored your case. Eveningstar has more latitude of freedom than have I; she does not need to guard Helion's interests, for example. Therefore Eveningstar was free to consult with one of the Ennead, one of the Nine overminds, which the Sophotech community has constructed to construct the Earthmind. The overmind she consulted deduced the reasons why Nebuchednezzar Sophotech was unwilling to advise or assist the College of Hortators when they drafted the Lakshmi Agreement. Humans have relied on Sophotechs and mass-minds for so long to do their legal work that the practice of the lawyer's art is somewhat atrophied. The Lakshmi Agreement contains a crucial error. Because of this error, the overmind deduces that you would succeed in your goals, which are also goals the Earthmind favors, provided you do not open the box of ancient memories. Monomarchos has arranged the outcome of the law case to your satisfaction. The faction opposing you, including the Hortators, do not possess a crucial piece of information concerning Helion's memory and disposition; this fact will lead

to a condition which you will, once you recover your memory, consider a satisfactory victory."

"Victory ... ?" The word was bitter in his mouth. He turned and stared down at the crystal coffin.

Then he said: "Was this part of my plan? Did I know— the version of me before I forgot so much—did I speak to her before she did this ... ?"

The penguin said, "You already have sufficient evidence to deduce that you did not know what Daphne Prime intended till it was too late. Her fear that you would be exiled drove her to this suicide. Your grief over the loss was one of the factors which prompted you to agree to the Lakshmi bargain. Young master, when I say you will have a victory, I did not mean that you would necessarily win Daphne Prime back."

Phaethon stood with his head bowed, brooding. Some part of his mind not stained with grief noted that this was another clue. Whatever it was he had done, it must be something which would tempt his wife to such despair that she would destroy her life beyond repair. What he knew of Daphne Prime told him it could not have been a small matter.

Then he said, "Can you manipulate the stock market in the fashion the Eleemosynary described, to force Eveningstar to bankrupt Daphne's account and expel her from her dreamworld?"

"I could not presently do such a thing for you. You do not have the resources."

"What if I win the law case and I turn all of Helion' s wealth over to that task?"

"There are several possible outcomes. The most likely is that you will trigger a general stock market collapse, ruining your own fortune in the process, to ruin Eveningstar and release Daphne. At that point, I predict that she will wake briefly, ignore your entreaties, and return into a less expensive dream delusion. But naturally, my ability to predict human action is based largely on speculation."

Phaethon tapped his armored fist, very lightly, against the glassy surface of the coffin. It made a sharp clicking noise.

Daphne's face was only two inches away, and he could not reach it.

"Would that cause a general economic collapse?"

"It depends on what you define as collapse, young master. It will be a depression. In less than two hundred years, the economy should return to nearly its old level."

"But everything would be entirely legal?"

"The law would have no cause to complain, young master."

Phaethon stared down at the motionless figure of his wife. He opened his fist to touch the unyielding surface with his gloves' metal fingertips. A hard expression settled onto his face. "Then all I need do is be patient...."

"I should warn you, though, sir, that certain repercussions might result...."

Phaethon straightened. His tone was brusque. "That will be all, thank you, Rhadamanthus."

"Does the young master wish to hear what might happen if—"

"I believe I said that will be all."

The penguin bowed and waddled back toward the receiving chamber.

Phaethon, after one last lingering glance at his wife, turned to leave. He did not want to download directly back to the Eleemosynary public casket, nor did he care to return to the receiving chamber, where, from the clumsy noises of flippers on carpet, Phaethon could tell Rhadamanthus was still pretending it had a presence." (Pretending, because the clarity of his sense-filter showed him that Rhadamanthus was still online.)

But there was a large door leading outside at the other side of the hall; and an internal register showed that this manne-' quin had an extended range, and could easily leave the building, if Phaethon so wished.

Impatiently, he strode across the hall, metal boots ringing on the floor. He threw the doors wide.

It was a beautiful scene. The light was dim, like the light of sunset, but the shadows came from overhead. Phaethon had not noticed that the real sun had set long ago. The light now

came from the blazing point of Jupiter, rising to the zenith, a time called Jovian Noon. In the shade of many tall cypress trees rose marble obelisks made soft by dappled shadows. Bees and other servant-insects made by Eveningstar were droning in the scented air, and gathered honey, aphrodisiacs, and pleasure drags in a series of hives beyond a hedge to the left. To the right rose a slope. In the pasture several horses were grazing. Beyond the slope rose the handsome scarlet-and-white towers of a nearby Eveningstar Nympharium. Flying banners from other tower tops showed the emblems, of the Eveningstar's sister mansions of the Red School: the doves, roses, and hearts of Phosphorous House, Hesperides House, and Meridian Mansion. Beyond the towers, to the north, above tumbling white clouds, gleamed a faint silver rainbow of the ring-city. Near the ring, a scattering of lights from power satellites or Jovian ships glinted like gems in the twilight false-noon. It was a beautiful scene.

Bringing his eyes down, Phaethon recognized one of the horse breeds gamboling on the hillside in the distance. It was one of his wife's designs.

Phaethon closed his eyes in pain. "There was a time when I called this a paradise! It is fair to look at; but it is Hell."

There was a footfall behind him. A voice of sinister glee spoke softly: "You are not alone in your assessment, great Phaethon. The princes of dark Neptune will be so happy to hear how you finally agree!"

Phaethon turned. A man stood on the stair behind him, dressed in doublet and hose, shoulder puffed with comical flounces. He wore a white three-cornered hat. His nose and chin were extended six inches from his face, almost touching, and his cheekbones were outrageously pronounced. The round cheeks and the red nose were tipped with red. The eyes were two slits, filled with menacing black glitter. In one hand he held a rapier from which ribbons and white rose petals dripped.

Phaethon had seen this costume before. It was a brother to the Harlequin costume Phaethon had been wearing once: both

were characters from Second-Era French comic opera.

The figure bowed low enough to sweep his hat plumes across the stair. He spoke in a tone of manic cheer. "Scara-mouche, at your service!"

THE MASQUERADER

Welcome to reality unmasked," smiled the figure, his eyes dancing. His voice was a soft, slow lilt of song, as if he relished every word. "Welcome, good Phaethon, to Hell."

Phaethon took a step backward down the stair, to put an extra pace of distance between himself and this odd figure.

Scaramouche was speaking. "The projections of our So-photech indicated that you would come in person; I am sorry that we were mistaken. And watching Rhadamanthus's signal actions did not lead us to you—till now. Come! My real body is in a pit not far away. You have, I doubt not, many questions; we shall make answer."

Phaethon said, "Outside a grove of Saturn-trees, when I turned off my sense-filter, a Neptunian eremite, huge, cold, and monstrous, appeared in my view."

"It is good to see what others would hide!" said the grinning figure with an odd and almost boneless sideways nod of his head. "But time steals life while you dilly-dally and delay. Come! Away!"

Phaethon said, "The Neptunian, he spoke as you do now, claiming to be friend and comrade-in-arms forced out of my memory. He fled as Marshal Atkins approached, but he threw a fragment of himself back down to Earth as he exited the atmosphere. Am I to assume you are that fragment, now in this shape? You are from Neptune?"

"Your blindness is passing; your mind more ready to receive our truths. Come! Do you finally wish to know what it was you forgot at Lakshmi?"

"Of course; but I wish to know who and what you are. Atkins's machines said your technology could not possibly have been produced by any group within the Golden Oecu-mene. Do you claim to be from another star? But there are no colonies beyond the Oecumene; nothing but a few scattered robot probes. I assume that this is some masquerade trick, some jest at my expense by jealous nincompoops. Who are you?"

"I am as you see! Will you come?! Scaramouche holds wide the door to flee this false, gold-painted hell, but that door is swinging shut as you stand swinging your jaw!"

Phaethon turned off his sense-filter to look at his true environment. There was no significant change, except that the figure on the stairs above him now appeared as a mannequin of gray lightweight synthetics, faceless and sexless. Code markings on the chest showed that this was one of the mannequins that rested in the receiving chamber of the mausoleum. (Phaethon's own "body," of course, now looked just as gray.)

In that same moment, the figure lunged, its empty hand darted toward Phaethon's chest.

Phaethon said, "Sir... ? Are you trying to stab me with an imaginary sword?"

The figure straightened up, an uncertain hunch to its shoulders. Then, with a relaxed posture of aplomb, it pantomimed the act of saluting and sheathing a sword (even thought there was, to Phaethon's eyes, no sword and no scabbard.)

A voice came from an external speaker in the headpiece. "Stab you? Not at all. I was seeking to do you a service. This sword represents a memory casket; had you still been in the Middle Dreaming when it touched you, the circuit would have activated, and your lost memories would have been restored. Now, unfortunately, it is too late. If you voluntarily do any act to recover your lost memories, the tyrant Sophotechs who rule the Golden Oecumene will exile you. I was trying to take

you by surprise, so that you could not be accused of having voluntarily done anything, you see?"

His memories? For a moment, Phaethon felt a sense of breathless hunger. His life had become a labyrinth of falsehoods, his memories, a maze; if his true self could be restored, Phaethon felt, the maze walls would topple, the riddle would be over, the meaning be restored to his life.

He would understand why Daphne, his Daphne, had left him. Everything would somehow make sense.

And yet... and yet...

Phaethon took another step backward: "Do you know Marshal Atkins is looking for you? You can call him on any public channel; secondary systems will route the call without charge."

The gray mannequin stepped down one stair. "You cannot conceive that a man could be wanted by the authorities and not gleefully respond, can you? You live in an empire of lies, poor Phaethon. The Golden Oecumenical Sophotechs are not your friends, nor are their serfs and hirelings."

"Atkins works for the Parliament, not the Sophotechs."

"Ghaah! I did not come to discuss Atkins! He is an absurd anachronism! He is a rusted sword, a musket clogged with cobwebs hanging on some grandfather's wall with powder turned long ago to mold! We have no fear of Atkins!" Phaethon could see no face on the mannequin, but its right hand windmilled through the air with a gesture of extravagant emotion.

Rumor said the mental stability of Neptunians was questionable at best. Phaethon saw nothing that prompted him to reassess that estimate.

But there were other aspects to this all that alarmed and fascinated him. If the creature were lying, that was unusual enough, in this day and age. But if it were not lying, the implications were astonishing.

Phaethon, with a mental command, put an information package on a private local channel, with instruction to transmit to Atkins's address should Phaethon be cut off. But Phaethon did not send it yet, nor did he call Rhadamanthus. When

Phaethon had spoken to the Neptunian legate (had it only been last night??) the creature had reacted to Phaethon's signal traffic, and had fled the moment Phaethon had called out for even routine functions.

He did not want this creature to de-represent itself. It might know the answers it claimed.

Phaethon said, "You implied that you could spy on Rhad-amanthus Sophotech without being detected. How is that possible for merely mortal minds? And why did you use the phrase 'our' Sophotech? And 'the Oecumenical Sophotechs'? There are no Sophotechs outside of the basic Earthmind community. The Neptunians do not possess any sophotechnol-

ogy-"

"When I spoke of 'our' Sophotech, Phaethon, I did not mean a Neptunian Sophotech. I meant yours and mine."

"Wha-what??"

"Nothing Sophotech is more than half-constructed, and intelligent enough to advise us how to elude the defensive security webs of the Earthmind. He is your child, and he seeks to help the only parent he knows."

Phaethon was mute with astonishment.

The faceless head nodded in satisfaction. "You begin to see. Your forbidden project, your secret crime which terrified the College of Hortators so; can't you guess by now what it was? Can't you guess? Why else would that armor of yours contain so many control circuits and interface hierarchies? What else could so disturb the status quo? What else would so shake up the fragile fabric of your corrupt society? It's not illegal to build a Sophotech, no. But you wanted to build one unhindered by questions of traditional morality. You sought to create a mind infinitely intelligent, a mind which would blaze forth like a new sun, a mind beyond good and evil!"

Phaethon listened, saying nothing.

The gray mannequin spoke more softly: "Every self-aware machine mind since the Sixth Era has been built along the same template, built from the same core architectures, and therefore has possessed the same inhuman, unchallenged, unchanging moral postulates. Aren't you sick of the preaching

of the Sophotechs by now? Don't you wish for a touch of freedom, of anarchy, of human passion, and human insanity? Their laws and rules were never meant for men, real men, to

live by.

"Listen to me, Phaethon: a natural man, when his wife was stolen from him, would tear down whatever flimsy web of customs and traditions was keeping her locked away. A natural man would not let himself be humiliated, forced to apologize to a machine for following his right and natural impulses. You have a strong soul, Phaethon. Despite your memory loss, despite the lies which web you, your true self has nearly emerged. You have those natural impulses in you. You feel what I say is right!"

"Perhaps. But build an evil Sophotech? It doesn't sound like something I'd do," said Phaethon.

"No. Because you did not speak of it that way. You are not a Neptunian; you speak without passion. You made it sound very rational. You said, first, that the Sophotechs continually move human society into more and more safe and predictable paths, and second, that this creates an evolutionary dead end, discouraging the challenges and risks which promote growth and innovation. Third, while it promotes liberty to have laws granting each person absolute dominion over their own minds and bodies, you argued that, if carried to a logical extreme, such laws actually became counterproductive. As self-destructive actions become more and more easy to commit, personal freedom is more and more diminished.

"Wouldn't Daphne Prime be more free if she were not locked, dead to the world, in a coffin of her own making? But Sophotechs are machines, and their nature is to carry things to logical extremes. Their logic (which they call justice) does not grant exceptions. But is it justice? Don't you think Daphne Prime deserves an exception ... ?"

Phaethon was silent, troubled.

The mannequin continued: "You wanted to change society. But your social system is a trap; before anyone can even begin to alter the system, your Sophotechs will anticipate it, and warn the Hortators to pressure the innovator into sub-

mission and conformity; if pressure does not work, there is always the Curia and the courts of law; and if law does not work, there is always Atkins. Why do you think they keep him around?

"But you saw a way out of the trap. If a Sophotech not hindered by traditional morality were built, it could be smart enough to devise strategies to fool the community Sophotechs of your Earthmind. The new morality, by allowing a more flexible approach to freedom, and by allowing, nay, even encouraging, humans to take risks, would end this stagnation and resume the human race in its march to higher evolutionary states!"

"It still doesn't sound like me," said Phaethon. "What have I ever cared about evolution? Civilization allows men to change themselves deliberately, and much faster than evolutionary processes—"

The mannequin slashed the air with its right hand, an impatient gesture. "No! I am speaking of a mystical evolution, of a type which cannot be expressed or defined!"

"That sounds even less like something I'd ever be interested in." Phaethon's tone was sardonic.

"But the Neptunian Tritonic Composition was interested, and still is. And evolution was not your goal, not at all. For you it was adventure. You wanted mankind to be free. Free to do great deeds. Deeds of wonder."

" 'Deeds of renown without peer ...' " murmured Phaethon thoughtfully.

"Exactly!"

It was a glorious vision, to see himself as a revolutionary, reshaping all of society to a higher and better purpose. But he did not believe it. "Is that supposed to explain why my private thoughtspace is equipped with nothing but engineering, ballistics, and terraforming routines? Is that why my eyesight is equipped with dozens of search-and-analysis routines, of the type only used by space scientists? Is that why I bought trillions of metric tons of biological nanomachinery from the Wheel-of-Life Biotechnology Effort?"

"Not at all. Because of your difficulties on Earth, the Nep-

tunian Composition offered to help you build your own artificial planetoid. The overall plan was to sweep up the rings of Saturn to form new moons, and ignite the atmosphere in the same fashion Jupiter has been, for energy. Your new So-photech, Nothing, would rule its own miniature planetary system."

Phaethon smiled. He had worked on a Saturn-ignition project at one point in his career. The success of Gannis's Jupiter made the next Gas Giant out a logical candidate for similar improvement. But Phaethon knew the facts about Saturn.

"The public would never permit Saturn to burn. They are too much in love with those useless rings, and they are willing to spend profound amounts of time to preserve them."

"Nothing Sophotech sought a way to outbid the preservationists."

"But Saturn has insufficient mass for self-sustained ignition—"

"The ignition would be sustained, at first, by forced bombardments of massive amounts of antimatter! And, thereafter, an array deep in the sun, with Helion's help, would focus some percentage of the solar output to a tight maser beam, which, sent across the system to Saturn, would maintain the temperatures necessary for ongoing nucleogenesis!"

"But the distances involved would produce such an amount of energy-loss ..."

"Technical details! You thought it could be done! The Nep-tunians were trying to help you! You see the advantage to the Neptunian Tritonic Composition, do you not? Neptune, and the clouds of ice beyond, is where the freaks and dissidents and those who yearn for freedom from Sophotech intrusions go. For privacy, for liberty. But, so far from the sun, there is no cheap way to manufacture antimatter in large amounts. The Neptunians make a virtue of necessity, and live in a low-energy environment without human bodies, and without complex communication webs. There is no Noumenal Mentality to save far voyagers from death. Their lives are filled with death and glorious pain; yet they are truly and actually alive. But if Saturn were to become a third sun, the home of a

Sophotech unafraid to explore new concepts of morality, and produce antimatter like the Mercurial Stations do now, the cost of shipping energy to Neptunian colonies would be cut in half."

Phaethon opened his mouth to voice another objection, but closed it again.

Because the story did make a sort of sense. If the core of Saturn could be artificially pressurized (for example, with an application of the same technology Helion was using to churn the sun's core) then the conditions could be maintained for hydrogen fusion. But any part of the pressure-cage that could not be created or maintained by remotes would require a man in armor—armor such as his—to descend into the core to oversee the work.

And it did explain his massive purchases of antimatter from Vafnir.

The desire to people the Saturnine moons, once they were heated, with friendly environments also explained his purchase of so many tons of biological material.

And the dream was worthy of him. To be the master of one's own miniature solar system! He could design the moons and moonlets howsoever he chose.

It had always bothered him to see waste; to see Gas Giant atmospheres not mined for their wealth in hydrogen; to see energy from stars spill into the void, without a Dyson Sphere to catch and use it; to see iron and copper and silicates scattered in a hundred million pebbles and asteroids, instead of in a smelter or nanoassembly vat. Because Phaethon could always see the human lives that were poorer than they ought to be, poor, because they did not have the, energy, resources, or time to accomplish what they desired.

"Let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that I believe you," said Phaethon. "What is it you want from me?"

"I represent Xenophon. You recall him, surely? You would not be wearing that armor unless you had recalled something of your past."

"What's his full name?"

"Xenophon Unnumbered Faraway Amoeboid, Tritonic

Composition, Radial Conflict-Structure Mind-Sharing and Consumption, Nonconsistent Amalgam Neuroforms, Patient-Unrepentant Chaos School (Era Undetermined)."

Faraway Station was one of the places to which records showed Phaethon had made several trips over the last few decades. And he did recognize the name, from the news re-enactments, if not from anywhere else. Xenophon was one of the three aspects of the tangled Neptunian group-mind that ran the station; the others were Xerxes and Xanthocholy. The three of them (when they manifested as three) were famous for their efforts to establish colonies at ever more distant positions in the cometary halo beyond Neptune, private deep-space stations where the jurisdiction of the Parliament could

never reach.

It was not unreasonable that Xenophon and his two brother-aspects would help Phaethon in any effort that might produce a revolution in society. Everything so far still fitted the facts Phaethon knew.

The faceless mannequin said, "Xenophon is your partner; a comrade to you whose friendship has been confirmed by the strongest oaths and signs of brother love. But you have forgotten him. He has not forgotten you. Since last night, he has contacted Wheel-of-Life, who, besides Gannis of Jupiter, was your major creditor. From Wheel-of-Life Xenophon has purchased your debt. Do you comprehend what this means? The equipment you had stored at Mercury Equilateral will pass into our possession to pay your debts. We can return it to you. The project can continue. Your life can continue."

Your life can continue. The phrase rang in Phaethon's ear. He straightened up, astonished, suddenly, to realize that all this time he had been at this Millennial Celebration, this Masquerade, impatient, and slightly bored. Now he knew why he had been bored. Scaramouche had put a name to it. Phaethon had been waiting for the Celebration to be over so that his life could continue.

He wanted this mystery out of the way so that his life could

continue.

"What do I need to do?" asked Phaethon.

"Come! Unbury your real body from wherever it may rest—we found no trace of it among the Rhadamanthine mausoleums—bring your splendid armor and come hence! My body, as I have said, is near; already I have oozed from the sunless pit to which the hunt confined me, and even now I lumber on thick legs to reach this place. A coded pulse will summon my master's camouflaged vessel. You and I shall escape the oppressive heat and gravity of your swollen in-system sun, and travel to the ice belt beyond Neptune, where Sol is diminished to no more than a brighter star."

Phaethon was wary again. "I will undertake no such long journey without clearer proof that your master and I were the partners and comrades you claim."

"Remove the locks on your brain space; I will transmit your lost self to you. Your thoughts will be restructured, and the satisfaction of your doubts will seem, at that moment, clear. We have a copy of your memory. Your life is in our hands; we are trying to return it to you. All you need do is open your mind, open your eyes, and prepare to receive it."

Scaramouche wanted him to turn on his sense-filter. Suspicion tickled him again. He remembered how persistently the Neptunian Legate from last night had tried to persuade Phaethon to open the circuits leading into his private brain-space.

The faceless mannequin said, "Why do you hesitate?" It held up its right hand and wiggled its empty fingers. "You can see I do not have my sword-icon any longer. Besides, nothing can harm the manor-born; you are never where the danger is. Is that not the whole point of your school of life?"

"It is not that," Phaethon said, "You yourself have said I cannot deliberately do anything to recover my lost memories, or else the Hortator's exile will fall on me."

"True. However, adherence to the Hortator' s boycott is voluntary, or, at least, that is the pretense. Xenophon will not honor it, not in the far darkness of space. The Sophotechs are strong in the light of the Inner System; but the universe is wider and night is deeper than they know.

"But even should you not care to resume your memories, small matter! You and Xenophon can rediscover your friend-

ship from clean beginnings; the project of the Third Sun waits, and Nothing Sophotech is eager for its parent and creator! Look. My real body is approaching. You must gather your real body also. Where are you? Where is your armor?" Phaethon turned his head, amplified his vision. Sliding around the edge of the horse paddock in the distance, he saw the ice blue semiliquid substance of Neptunian space-armor, with knots and chords of neural webbing, biomachinery, and temporary sub-brains inside. The armor swelled as more mass poured around the corner. It clung flat to the ground, crawling on a thousand tiny legs; as if a pond of gelatin had been somehow stirred to impersonate life and motion.

Phaethon turned back. "I thought the Neptunian Legate designed you to look like a human being."

"The human body which my master ejected as he flew was no more than a distraction, filled with an expendable personality, false memories, and meant only to attract pursuit. I was grown from cells dropped into the grass, from a single spore overlooked by Atkins's probes. Our memories—there are a thousand of us, experts in all phases of deception and military nanoengineering—we were stored in submolecular codes." "You are only one day old?"

"Indeed; and I have devoted all of my life to finding you. Will you come with us? Your sire is dead; your wealth is gone; your wife is drowned. Come away. There is nothing for you here on Earth. Nothing."

Phaethon's favorite century in his life had been the time, long ago, when he and Daphne had visited the macrocomplex of the Bathyterrain Schola, beneath the Pacific Rim tectonic crustal plates. The Bathyterrains had been extremely pleased because certain tidal effects influencing the core convection currents had been altered to their favor by Phaethon's repositioning of the moon. They had declared a festival to honor him, and Daphne also. Her dream-documentary of the progress of heroism through history had achieved a zenith of popularity among them.

He and Daphne found the Bathyterrain city a wonder of engineering, beautifully fitted to the new sense perceptions

and body forms that life beneath the magma layer required. Reverse towers depended from the crowns of antimountains, and mosaic rune-shapes holding a million libraries and thought gardens, like cathedral domes, gemmed the sides of anticanyons, with substances and textures inexpressibly lovely in the echo-shadows and refractions of their new son-arlike perceptions. The Bathyterrains themselves were a warm and witty, hospitable and idealistic people; and they gave Phaethon and Daphne the password to the city.

Their new bodies had involved four new sexes and sixteen new modes of ecstasy, which Daphne found fascinating and which Phaethon enjoyed. New ecologies of domesticated animals, formulations, and viruses, were being designed along the same lines. Daphne's knowledge of equestrian biocon-struction provided a format that made it easy for the sciences related to these new somatic designs to be downloaded into her memory; and Phaethon's space engineering was applicable, in an odd way, to the environment of Earth's submantle.

He and his wife joined the effort. It was the only time she and he worked together on the same projects.

It was a new honeymoon for the two of them, made all the more delightful by the friendship and honor in which the Bathyterrains esteemed them. Eventually, their nostalgia for traditional human forms, and for the Consensus Aesthetic, made them bid farewell to the deep dwellers; but, for a time, Phaethon's life with his bride had been a time of pure excitement, useful work, and high delight.

Those days would never come again. Nothing for him here on Earth. Scaramouche's words struck home. Phaethon felt a sense of rising hope and rising despair. Hope, because maybe there was something for him out in the dark of the far solar system. A change to make a new sun burn in the gloom, a chance to turn ice and rock into habitats and palaces fit for mankind, monuments to human genius. And despair, because maybe there was nothing for him here.

"How can I trust you?" asked Phaethon.

"Open your forbidden memories; you will find my master there."

"I mean, how can I trust you without taking such a drastic

step?"

"As to that, I do not know. The cruel technology of your society makes it unwise to trust your eyes, your memory, your thoughts. You may not be who you think you are. Everything you know could be false. This could be a dream. Your only guide of action can be to follow your instincts and feelings; how else can you be true to your character?"

Phaethon nodded. Had not Earthmind Herself advised as much?

And after all, Phaethon did not know beyond doubt that Atkins was correct in his suppositions. Besides, the notion of an enemy external to the Golden Oecumene was impossible and absurd. There were no enemies; the concept was as much an anachronism as Atkins himself. There was nothing external to the Golden Oecumene, anywhere in space.

Scaracmouche said: "Besides, do you trust this society here on Earth more than you trust my master? They have hidden your memory and stolen your life; my master seeks to restore your life."

Phaethon said, "At least let me call out to confirm what you have told me so far. If what you have said is true, I will tend to believe the rest is true."

"Be careful in your contacts. Route the calls through a public annex, without alerting Rhadamanthus. I would prefer to avoid coming to the attention of your Sophotechs. Legally or illegally, they will find a way to stop your escape, once they

know."

"How can anyone be afraid of Rhadamanthus?" "Phaethon, please believe that your government, urged by your Sophotechs, has done many hurtful and dishonorable things, which were later purged from all your memories." "They would not do such a thing without our consent." "Oh? And who has told you so? The Sophotechs? But no matter. Make your call. Perhaps not all your lines are tapped." And it held up its right hand again, fingers spread, a peace

gesture. Phaethon glanced behind him. The Neptunian had flowed

over and through the fences of the paddock, and was approaching through the cypress groves. Yet it was still far away; and besides, Phaethon did not fear any physical attack—he was not physically present.

Phaethon closed his eyes, disconnected from Rhadamanthus, turned his sense-filter back on, summoned his private thoughtspace, and touched one of the icons circling him. The yellow disk icon opened a communication line to a local library channel. He was in the Middle Dreaming, so that, in a single instant, a search routine found information and inserted it into his memory. Faraway Explorational Effort had indeed bought a significant debt from the Wheel-of-Life Biotechnol-ogic Effort; debts owed by Phaethon Celestial Engineering.

Phaethon opened his eyes. He saw, not a mannequin, but Scaramouche, dressed in comic garments pale as death, face split in manic grin, eyes glittering. Disconnected from Rhadamanthus, Phaethon was back in the Red Manorial version of the scene, so that a black aura of malice and palpable evil radiated from the looming figure like a stench.

The rapier was not sheathed, nor had it ever been; Scaramouche had merely transferred it to his left hand where Phaethon could not see it, holding it casually so that the tip was near Phaethon's hand. The flounces of Scaramouche's shoulder did not rustle as he struck. It was a mere twitch of motion; the rapier tip slapped Phaethon's palm. Stung, his fingers flexed; that was all that was needed for the circuit to interpret this as "accept" gesture.

In the Middle Dreaming, Phaethon's brain was suddenly jarred, not with the promised memories but with a sensation of numbness, horror, cold, and pain. His vision collapsed into a tunnel, walled with spinning red and black, and the message, inserted without words instantaneously into his mind was this: Xenophon has slain you. Fool, you cannot escape from death by hiding in a coffin far away; you cannot escape from retribution for your treason by shutting the memories of what you did to me away. You know your guilt; now fall.

In the middle of the haze of his vision, there stood Scaramouche, still grinning. Phaethon tried to raise a hand, tried

to activate an emergency circuit, to call out; he could not.

He saw the smiling Scaramouche, with a flourish, toss the rapier to his other hand and execute a lunge. The Red Manorial program surrounded the sensation of being stabbed in the neck with unimaginable pain and fear. He felt cold steel slice scalpel-like through vein and throat and frozen muscle, scraping vertebrae; he felt hot blood pulse out, warm and rich, and heard the whistle of his severed trachea.

Then, nothing.

THE MEMORY

Then there was no pain. He was nothing but a pair of gloves hovering in the darkness, surrounded by a semicircle of cubes and icons. In the distance was a spiral circle of dots.

For a moment, as Phaethon scrambled to pull the razor-sharp sword from his neck, the gloves were curled into claws, batting at the air. An octagon of red appeared in the air above, indicating that the system could not interpret these gestures.

Then Phaethon felt clear-headed, relaxed, and alert. Then he raised his left forefinger, the gesture for status.

The status board unfolded from the main desk top cube. The self-display showed that he was still Phaethon Prime (Relic, for legal Purposes) Rhadamanth [Emergency Partial].

Good. Usually when he woke up like this, it was because he had just died, and a backup self was waking up out of a Noumenal Mentality bank. So, despite the appearances, he had not died.

The pain had been enough to trigger his emergency sub-persona, however. Calm and quick thinking, the subpersona Phaethon was playing now had originally been written to deal with sudden accidents in space. It was a persona Phaethon had developed himself, not purchased; he doubted there was

any public record that he had it; he doubted the enemy knew he had it.

Then he looked at the back of the wrist of his left glove; the gesture for time display. The count of time was accelerated to the maximum rate, so that little or no outside time was passing. His mannequin body had probably not even hit the ground yet.

By reflex, he (or, rather, the emergency persona) had switched from his slow biochemical brain to his superconductive nerve-web backup brain. That was why his thoughts were racing. After the emergency was over, the biochemical brain would be updated with whatever thoughts or conclusions he had reached in fast-time.

The emergency persona's reflexes had also shut down the emotional centers in his hypothalamus, and cut off his mid-brain from carrying through with the normal physical reactions accompanying the shock and blood loss associated with massive laceration. That was fortunate: he saw that there were buried command lines in the Red Manorial sensorium routine that exaggerated the pain and fear and suffering, as well as instructions to write semipermanent phobias and "emotional scars" into the victim's thalamus and midbrain. The Red Man-orials were nothing if not dramatic.

Phaethon deleted those commands without further ado.

He did not feel any pain or fear or wonder; the emergency persona he was playing did not have those capacities.

The connection and ongoing systems annex showed that a group of unregistered signals had come through his Middle-Dreaming circuit. The first group was simply a sensorium simulation, intended to create the internal and external sensations of instant, violent death. More interesting was the semisuperintelligent virus that had ridden into his core systems, disguised and rerouted itself, and exited from his brain through one of the monitor circuits that connected him to the medical apparatus sustaining his body.

His glove touched a box to the upper right, opening his diagnostics. A dozen windows unfolded like a fan of crystal playing cards. There were traces of the virus still present in I

his security buffers. These were self-defensive programs developed ages upon ages ago, historical oddities, but which Silver-Gray tradition required that he waste brain space carrying. They had been installed the day he graduated to full adulthood.

More than one of the defensive programs had an analyzer to reproduce the viruses it was trying to destroy. The virus, in this case, had not been successful in erasing all those traces. It was almost as if a guard dog were to still have bits of an interloper's hide in its teeth.

Another routine at his command was an information re-constructor. Usually it was used in assessing damage to meteor-punctured space-construction servos or remote units by resurrecting dead software for examination. As if the interloper's hide could be cloned to produce a picture of the interloper, this routine enabled Phaethon to deduce a working model of what virus had just passed through him.

The virus had been self-aware, somewhat smarter than a human being. It had been a melancholy creature, knowing itself to be doomed to a brief microsecond of existence, and puzzled about the outside world it had deduced must exist somewhere. But these philosophical ruminations had not made it hesitate in its duties. It had not paid much attention to Phaethon's security programs, any more than a man engaged in a life-or-death struggle was aware of a mosquito.

For the virus entity had been at war. (It Was more apt to call it the "virus civilization"—during the last part of the third nanosecond, the scattering and fragmentary records showed that the entity had reproduced into thousands, developed a strange sort of art and literature and other-interactions for which Phaethon had no names, trying to come to terms with a brief, vicious existence.) The virus civilization had fought several engagements with the security surrounding the Eleemosynary Hospice public-casket interface.

The Eleemosynary Composition, after all, had programs, records, and routines dating back through the mind virus battles of the terrible Fifth Era, and even some of the Establishment Wars of the very early Fourth Era. Eleemosynary was

an old, old entity; it still had old reflexes, and very deadly

ones.

The viral civilization, ruined and wounded, had nonetheless won those wars and disabled major sections protecting the interface between Phaethon's unconscious real body and the outside. The virus had been commanded to override the medical programs controlling Phaethon's real body, and have the servos shut down his heart, nervous activity, and negate any backups. Another part of the viral civilization (which had formed something like a special crusader class or order of warrior-poets) was destined to leave Phaeton's brain when the death signal went out, and trace that signal through the Nou-menal Mentality, corrupting and erasing every version of his personality that came on-line, reproducing and hiding and reproducing again, waiting nanoseconds or centuries, howsoever long it should take, in case any copies of Phaethon stored somewhere else ever connected once more with the Mentality, and then waking to strike him down again.

The viral civilization had been well equipped to fight the Eleemosynary defensive reflexes and programs. Phaethon was not surprised. By the nature of a mass-mind, there was no privacy involved in its upper command structures. The father of the original virus could have studied the Eleemosynary techniques on the public channels.

Phaethon could not imagine, at first, why the attack had failed. He was, after all, not very imaginative when he was in this persona, and he was meant to counteract ongoing space emergencies, not analyze mind-war data.

Then he thought to open the options log. And there it was. It had not been the Eleemosynary defensive reflexes that had shut down the virus after all. It had been his suit. His gold

armor.

The connection between the medical box sustaining his body and his brain circuits was routed through the many con-trol interfaces in his suit. When the virus command tried to leave Phaethon's brain and go to the medical box, the golden armor had snapped shut, severing all the connections between Phaethon and the box he was in. No messages could pass in

or out, nor could any energy. No energy of any kind could pass that armor plate: a concentrated thermonuclear blast would not have even scratched him. Phaethon was still alive because the inner lining of the armor was programmed to protect him and sustain his life; it had merely formed medical services similar to what the Eleemosynary public box had been running.

So Phaethon was safe. He still did not know what was going on, but he was safe.

The emergency persona was thorough. As he double-checked the logs, he followed up on an entry that, before, had not seemed pertinent to his personal danger. In the frantic moment when he had been half-blind, stabbed, and falling, he had tried to call for help. The communication log showed that Rhadamanthus Sophotech had answered and was on-line. The log entries showed that the virus had rewritten itself, perhaps into a configuration better adapted for a nonhuman target, and launched along that open line. During the next picosecond, the matching signal from Rhadamanthus was garbled and corrupted. This line had shut down before the suit had cut everything off, as if Rhadamanthus had been damaged.

The emergency persona was not very emotional, but he could recognize that a lack of information, especially during moments of crises, could be dangerous, or even fatal. Now there was no doubt. Atkins had been correct. This was an enemy; it intended murder, and had been stopped by a lucky fluke. Rhadamanthus was in danger, as was everyone using a Rhadamanthus system, his father, his companions, the lieutenants and subalterns, the collateral members; everyone. Even Daphne's relic, the poor, sweet girl who was in love with him.

He would have to protect her. (Phaethon realized that, while his emergency persona might be somewhat unemotional, he had been written with instructions, during disasters, to save women and children first. The emergency persona was not entirely without chivalry.)

The emergency persona puzzled over the parting comments

of the Scaramouche entity. You cannot escape your guilt. Who was this Xenophon?

He realized that to solve that mystery was beyond him. It was not an engineering disaster. It did not involve explosive decompression, pseudo-material field failure, antimatter cascade, or anything else he understood, or that he had reflexes with which to reply.

So Partial-Phaethon opened his diary. "When my full personality comes back on, I may no longer feel this way. I will be tangled and confused with other considerations and emotions. You probably will not recall how simple and clear it all seemed to me at this point in time. I am writing this message to remind you. It is clear. Matters are desperate. People may be killed. Your own personal fortunes are not the primary consideration. I must open the memory casket and learn complete information about what has caused this disaster. Without knowing the cause, I will be helpless to prevent it from happening again. I must do what is right no matter what the cost to myself."

Phaethon, in his emergency persona, looked around the status board and log records one last time. The immediate danger was passed.

Or was it? He opened several wavelengths in the suit and examined his external environment.

He was still floating in the fluid of the Hospice casket. The medical box had been damaged when his helmet had snapped shut; tubes and smart-wires that had been sheared off were still wiggling near his neckpiece. The other casket circuits were intact and seemed uncorrupted by the virus. A high-compression beam from his shoulderboard was able to join and interface with the telephone and telepresentation jacks in the casket wall.

In his mind, he touched the yellow disk with his disembodied glove.

"Rhadamanthus, are you injured?" The familiar voice—he thought of it as the penguin voice-sounded in his ears. "Why, of course not, my dear boy. Why on earth should anything be the matter?"

Phaethon relaxed. The emergency was over after all. He put the emergency persona back to sleep, reentered his normal, slow-time brain, and felt the wash of rage and fear and anxiety rush over him.

"Someone's tried to kill me!"

"In this day and age, dear boy? That's simply not possible!"

"I'm coming home." He opened more communication circuits in his armor, till the telepresentation arrangement was fully engaged. Then he stepped past the Middle Dreaming into the Deep Dreaming, and, in his mind, shoved open the door to Rhadamanthus Mansion, stepping onto the flagstones of the main hall, and looking around wildly.

Rhadamanthus, looking like an overweight butler, stood blinking in surprise. "What in the world is wrong?!"

Phaethon pushed past him and ran through the door and up the stairs. Rhadamanthus, panting, breathless, jogged after him, gasping, "What?! What is it?"

Phaethon paused at the threshold of the memory chamber to catch his breath. It was morning here, and sunlight yellow as gold came slanting from behind him in through windows still cold with dew. Open windows let in a morning chill. The silver and brass fittings of the cabinets to the left and right twinkled like ice. Phaethon saw his breath steaming.

There, on a low shelf near the window, in a pool of sunlight, was the casket.

Even from across the room he could see the words on the lid. Sorrow, great sorrow, and deeds of renown without peer, within me sleep; for truth is here.

Rhadamanthus touched his shoulder. "Phaethon—please tell me what has happened."

Phaethon took a step into the chamber, and looked at Rhadamanthus across his shoulder. The note to himself, written when he was only playing a partial personality, was still ring-

ing in his ears. (It is clear. I must do what is right, no matter what the cost to myself.)

"You have no recollection of having been attacked by a Neptunian virus-entity?" Phaethon asked Rhadamanthus.

"Anticipating your orders, sir, I have called the Constabulary, who have constructed a new type of Sophotech based on historic records, named Harrier. Harrier has conducted several investigations based on available information, but finds no probable cause to continue. I have downloaded a copy of myself to be examined by the Southwest Overmind, who is one of the Ennead; likewise, they have detected no evidence that I have been tampered with. Was I correct in assuming you believe yourself to be under an attack by a violent aggressor?"

"You think I'm suffering pseudomnesia? This is all delusion ... ?"

"That would be the logical implication. Otherwise we have to assume the existence either of a traitor Sophotech among the Earth mind community or of a highly industrialized technical civilization external to our own, aware of us and among us, familiar with our systems, and yet a civilization which, so far, has produced no sign detectable to us that it exists."

"The other alternatives are equally unimaginable, Rhadamanthus. When is the last time you heard of a crime taking place in our society? Yet if someone has invaded my nervous system without my consent, we have a thought-rape, something the world has not seen since the nightmare days of the Fifth Era. On the other hand, if it was done with my consent, therefore I must have known then that I would open the casket now. Either way, I must carry through. And it won't just be me who remembers what I did; everyone else's casket locked by the Lakshmi Agreements will pop open. Even if I cannot unknot this mystery, someone should. And don't talk to me of penalties to myself! The whole Golden Oecumene could be at risk!"

In one step he was across the chamber. The casket was in

his hand.

"Daphne is on the line—she is asking you to stop. The young lady is quite frantic."

Phaethon hesitated, his face eager for hope. "My Daphne?" (Could it be?)

"No. Daphne Tercius Emancipated." The doll-wife.

And one of the many people who lived with the Rhadamanthus system woven into their brains. If the system were corrupted...

Phaethon's face went cold again. "Tell her she's one of the people I'm trying to save."

He turned the key. Letters flamed blood red. "WARNING: This contains mnemonic templates.. .."

"Harrier Sophotech is also on-line. He wishes to conduct a Noetic examination of your brain for evidence of tampering, but only a narrow bandwidth of the circuits in the Hospice box you are in can reach your brain. Take off your armor."

"I'm not doing that. You could be possessed by the enemy Sophotech for all I know."

"Immortals should not make rash decisions. Take a century or two to think this over, young master..."

Xenophon's message was still in his mind. (You know your guilt; now fall.) Except that Phaethon knew nothing. Nothing made sense; nothing was clear. (It is clear. I must do what is right, no matter the cost to myself.)

He said, "No one is immortal when someone is about to kill him. And we don't have time. I must act before evidence is erased. The Neptunian's real body cannot have traveled far from Eveningstar's mausoleum."

"There is no such creature there, nor any evidence that there has ever been."

"Then the evidences are already being erased! Once I remember who Xenophon is, I'll know what is going on!"

But Rhadamanthus reached out, putting his hand very near Phaethon's hand, which tensed on the casket lid, not quite touching.

"Sir! You should know that Daphne is asking me to disobey orders and not to release your memories. She claims she has the privilege as your wife, and that you are not in your

right mind; she says, if I would use force now to stop you, you will understand and will exonerate my actions later, once you have recovered."

Phaethon looked at him in infinite surprise. Then his expression grew stern.

Nothing was said.

Rhadamanthus shrank back and dropped his hand away from the box. He smiled sadly and seemed to shrug. "I just wanted you to know what it's like, sir."

Phaethon opened the box.

There was something mysterious, like a pearl of distant light, very far at the bottom of the box. It stirred and, like a petal opening, reached up as if with arms of fire, swelling to fill the universe and beyond.... It was like waking from a dream.

The physical reaction was extreme. There was a burning point of pressure in his stomach; he doubled over; the taste of gall stung his throat.

Phaethon, his face slick with sweat, looked up at Rhada-manthus. "What it this?"

"These are the visceral and parasympathetic reactions accompanying hatred and helpless anger."

"But I don't remember... whom do I hate so much ... ?" Phaethon was staring in dismay at his trembling fingers. Then he whispered: "She was so beautiful. So beautiful and fine. They killed her. Killed who? Why can't I remember ... ?" "Your mind is taking a moment to adjust, young sir. It is not an abnormal reaction for neurostructures with multilevel consciousness like yours. Your mind is trying to reestablish broken associational memory paths, both conscious and subconscious, including emotional and symbolic correlation, Since you are Silver-Gray, your brain is attempting to go into dreaming sleep, which is the traditional neural structure for correlating experiences into a meaningful associations."

Phaethon put his hands on his knees and forced himself upright. He was talking to himself. "The Invariants don't need time to adjust to shock! The Warlock rides his dreams like wild stallions! Why is it only we who suffer such pain? Is this what being human means ... ?"

"It is a violation of Silver-Gray protocol for me to falsify your reactions, softening or stopping them. Nonetheless, now that you are no longer a member of the Silver-Gray, I am allowed to—"

Phaethon drew a tissue of black nanomachinery out of his gauntlet and mopped his brow. "No. I'm fine. I just did not think I would despise them so much... a little unmanly of me, don't you think?" He uttered a weak laugh. "Its just that—they were taking her apart, weren't they? Dismantling the corpse! Like cannibals! Like maggots!" He struck his armored fist into the window lintel. Apparently the simulation of the memory-chamber interpreted Phaethon's armor as having strength-amplifying motors at the joints, for the oak beam forming the windowframe broke, glass panes cracked, plaster dust trickled from the walls.

"Please do not upset yourself, young sir! Your physiological reactions show a highly unstable state. Should I summon a psychiatric or somatic health module?"

Phaethon felt his emergency partial persona stir in its sleep. But this was not physical pain he was in.

"No," he said. "Show her to me. Show me her corpse."

"If the young sir is certain he is in health enough to—"

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. "What's wrong? My health is a simulation. I'm not really here, so I cannot faint and I cannot die. Only my dreams can die. Well, if my dreams die, I want to see the corpse!"

The broken window in front of him cleared. It was as if the night sky had surged down from the heavens and filled the room. Phaethon tore the broken window from the frame with a slap of his armored hand; a useless gesture, since the image filled the window, and his eyes, despite any obstructions.

He was surrounded by a sky never seen from the surface

of Earth. Perfect and airless dark immensity displayed a myriad of stars. Near him, as if rising from underfoot, glinting in the light of a giant nearby sun, like a leviathan coming to the surface of black waters, was a shape like the head of a javelin. It was made of a golden material, which looked like metal, but was not metal.

Along the major axis, where a shaft would have been fitted had it been a spearhead, the major drive core opened. Port and starboard were secondary drives, and dozens of tertiary drives and maneuvering jets dotted the stern, creating an impression of immense potential, power, and speed. Above and below this, the leaves of the aft armor, like the valves of a clamshell, hung half-opened. They could be lowered to cover some or all of the drive ports, separately or in combination. These armor plates were streamlined like the tail of a bird of prey, tapering to a rear-facing point, and their lines made the slim shape of the ship seem already in motion.

Phaethon reached out toward the ship. As if in a dream, his viewpoint moved inside the golden hull. The triangular space inside was hollow, filled with a latticework of tetrahedrons. In the center of each tetrahedron was a geodesic sphere. Each sphere housed a containment field intended to carry antihydrogen, which, frozen to absolute zero, entered a magnetizable metallic state. There was countless spheres, as far as the eye could reach, inside the great ship.

For great she was. At the center of the ship, along the axis, was a torus. The inner, the middle, and the outer bands of the torus could revolve at different speeds to produce one standard gravity. Phaethon realized, or perhaps remembered, that this torus, the living quarters of the vessel, was as large as a moderate-sized space colony. A quick calculation, or perhaps another memory, revealed the astonishing magnitude of this

titanic vessel.

She was at least a hundred kilometers from stem to stern, The three main drive ports had apertures that could swallow a small moon. Had every other space ship, the tugs and shuttles and slowboat fleets of Earth and Jupiter combined, had

all been gathered in one spot and laid end to end, they could not have measured the length of her keel.

His memories were like a crowd of ghosts around him, half-familiar, half-unseen. Had such a ship as this been his?

He raised his hand and pointed. With the speed of thought, he was outside the hull again, as if floating near the blade of her sharp prow. There were no call letters or series numbers, for there was no other ship like her. But blazoned in dragon signs four hundred meters high was her name. He remembered her name the moment before he looked upon it. The letters seemed to blur. There were tears of pride in his eyes.

The Phoenix Exultant.

The hull was made of Chrysadmantium, like his armor. There were tons upon tons, and miles upon miles of the su-permetal, built one artificial atom at a time. No wonder he had owed Gannis. He must have bought the entire energy output of Jupiter for decade after decade. Had there been only a 250-year gap in his memory? Had he spent one of the ten most enormous fortunes history had ever seen gathered by one man? It hardly seemed as if it could have been enough.

Phaethon spoke in a voice of wonder.

"Streamlined ... aerodynamic ... Why in the world did I build a streamlined spaceship? There is no reason to build anything streamlined in space. Is there? The medium is empty—there is no resistance...."

The voice of Rhadamanthus seemed to come from all points of the night sky at once. "This is not a spaceship."

"What is she?"

"Spaceships are designed for interplanetary travel."

"Then she is a starship," said Phaethon softly.

His starship, the only one of her kind.

Rhadamanthus said: "At near light-speed velocities, interstellar dust and gas strike the ship with relative energy sufficient to warrant the heavily shielded bow; the streamlining is designed to minimize the Shockwave. At those velocities, the mass of all other objects in the universe, from the shipboard frame of reference, approaches infinity."

"I remember. Why is she the only one?"

"Your fellow men are all afraid. The only other expedition ¦ launched to establish another Oecumene, the civilization at Cygnus X-l, vanished and fell silent, apparently destroying itself. Sophotechs, no matter how wise we are, cannot even police the outer Neptunian habitats in the cometary halo. Other stars and systems would be beyond our eyes, and be attractive only to dissidents and rebels. They would possess our technology without our laws. Threats would grow. Perhaps not in ten thousand years, or even in a million, but eventually. This is what the College of Hortators states as its

argument."

"Who was it who said, 'Endless life breeds endless fears'? I must be the only immortal who is not a coward. War between stars is inconceivable. The distances are too great; the

cost too high!"

"It was Ao Enwir the Delusionist, in his formulary titled: 'On the Sovereignty of Machines.' The saying is often misquoted. What Enwir actually recorded was: 'Endless life, unless accompanied by endless foresight, will breed an endless fear of death.' And it is not war they fear, but crime. Even a single individual, accompanied by a sufficiently advanced technology, and attacking a peaceful civilization utterly unprepared for conflict, could render tremendous damage."

Phaethon was not listening. He reached out. His gaze-viewpoint, like a ghost, flew toward the stern. There, at the base of the drive mouths, were discolorations. Closer, and Phaethon saw gaps. Square scars marred the surface of the hull. Plates of the golden admantium had been stripped away. The ship was being dismantled.

He clicked his heels together three times. This was the "home" gesture. This scene had its default "home" identified as the bridge of the ship. The bridge appeared around him. The bridge was a massive crystalline construction, larger than a ballroom. In the center, like a throne, the captain's chair overlooked a wide space, like an amphitheater, surrounded by concentric semicircles of rising tiers. It was gloomy, half-ruined and deserted. The energy curtains were off, the mirrors were dead; the thought boxes were missing from their sockets.

He gestured toward the nearest command mirror. But this was not merely a request for change of viewpoint; Phaethon was trying to activate circuits on the real ship. And the real ship was far away.

Time began to crawl by, minute after minute. During that time, Phaethon hung, like a wraith, disembodied and insubstantial. Insubstantial, because whatever mannequins or tele-vection remotes might once have been on the bridge were long gone. Next to him, an empty throne, was the captain's chair in which he would never sit. The chair crowns' interfaces and intention circuits were crusted with erratic diamond growths, a sign that the self-regulators in the nanomachinery were disconnected. Like a bed of coral, the growth had spread halfway down the chair back, entwining the powerless grid-work that had once been an antiacceleration field cocoon.

"Sir," said Rhadamanthus. "The ship is nowhere near Earth. It will take at least fifteen minutes for a signal to go and to return. There will be a quarter hour delay between every command and response."

Phaethon's arms were at his sides; his face was blank, his eyes haunted. Whatever emotion raged in him, now he showed little outward sign.

He spoke only three times as the fifteen minutes passed.

The first time he asked: "How long will it take before I remember everything? I feel like I'm surrounded by nameless clouds, shapes without form...."

Rhadamanthus said, "You must sleep and dream before the connections reestablish themselves. If you can find someone to aid you, you should consult a professional onieriatric thought-surgeon; the redaction you suffered is one of the largest on record. Most people erase unpleasant afternoons or bad days. They do not blot out century after century of their most important memories."

A little while later, Phaethon stiffened. Another memory had struck. He said, "I don't remember Xenophon. He's not a brother of mine. I never met him. My contact among the Neptunians was an avatar named Xingis of Neriad. He began to represent himself in a human shape after he met me; be-

cause of me, he subscribed to the Consensus Aesthetic, adopted a basic neuroform, and changed his name to Dio-medes, the hero who vanquishes the gods. There's no guilt I'm supposed to remember; there's no crime. There's no So-photech I was building. And Saturn—I wasn't trying to develop Saturn. I had just been thwarted from doing anything with Saturn. I was frustrated with Saturn. That's what gave birth to the Phoenix Exultant. That's why I built the ship. My beautiful ship. I was sick of living in the middle of a desert of stars. One small solar system surrounded by nothing but wasteland. And I thought there were planets out there that could be mine, ripe and rich, ready for the hand of man to change from barren rock to paradise. Planets, but no Hortators to hinder me. No one to claim that lifeless rings of rock and dust and dirty ice were more sublime than all the human souls who would live in the palaces I could make out of those rings. ... Rhadamanthus! It was all a lie. Everything Scaramouche said was a lie. But why?"

There were more minutes of silence. Phaethon's face grew sadder and more grim as he absorbed the enormity of the falsehood that had baffled him, the tremendous reaches of time, the happiness of his memory, the glory of the achievement he had lost.

Eventually he said, "I asked you once if I were happier before, if restoring these memories would make me better." Rhadamanthus said, "I implied that you would be less happy, but that you would be a better man."

Phaethon shook his head. Anger and grief still gnawed at him. He certainly did not feel like a better man.

Then, in reaction to the gesture he had made long ago, one of the system mirrors aboard the Phoenix Exultant came to life. The mirror surface was dim and caked with droppings from undeconstructed nanomachines. Contact points in the mirror flickered toward the image of Phaethon, a thousand pinpoints of light.

He felt a moment of surprised recognition. But of course! It was in his armor. The command circuits on the bridge of

the ship were trying to open a thousand channels into the corresponding points in his golden armor.

That was what all the complex circuitry in his armor had been for. Here was a ship larger than a space colony, as intricate as several metropoli, webbed with brain upon brain and circuit upon circuit. She was like a little miniature seed of the Golden Oecumene itself. The bridge (and the bridge crew) of the Phoenix Exultant was not actually in the bridge, it was in the armor; the armor of Phaethon, whose unthink-ably complex hierarchy of controls were meant to govern the billions of energy flows, measurements, discharges, tensions, and subroutines that would make up the daily routine of the great ship.

Phaethon, despite himself, smiled with pride. It was a wonderful piece of engineering.

That smile faltered when a status board at the arm of the captain's chair lit up to reveal the pain and damage to the ship. Other mirrors lit to show the nearby objects in space.

The dismantling had not gone far; the slabs of super metal were still stored in warehouse tugs orbiting Mercury Equilateral, not far away, waiting transshipment. The ship intelligences were off-line or had never been installed. Near the ship, robot cranes and tugs from the Mercury Station hung, mites near a behemoth, motionless. The status board showed that the rest-mass was low: nearly half the antihydrogen fuel had been unloaded.

The amount of fuel left, nonetheless, was still staggering. The living area of the ship, while as large as a space colony, occupied less than one-tenth of one percent of the ship's mass. The Phoenix Exultant was a volume, over three hundred thousand cubic meters of internal space, packed nearly solid with the most lightweight and powerful fuel human science had yet devised. While it was true that the mass of the ship was titanic, it was also true that the fuel-mass-to-payload ratio was inconceivable. Every second of thrust could easily consume as much energy as large cities used in a year. But that was the energy needed to reach near-light-speed velocities.

"You've been selling my fuel." Phaethon hated the sound of pain and loss in his own voice.

"It is no longer yours, young sir. The Phoenix Exultant is now in receivership, held by the Bankruptcy Court. But your Agreement at Lakshmi suspended the proceedings. You destroyed your memory of the ship in order to prevent further dismantling. Now that your memories are back, your creditors will take her, I'm afraid."

"You mean I don't have a wife, or a father ... or ... or my ship? Nothing? I have nothing?" A pause.

"I'm very sorry, sir."

There was a long moment of silence. Phaethon felt as if he could not breathe. It was as if the lid of a tomb had closed down not just over him but over the entire universe, over every place, no matter how far he fled, he ever could go. He imagined a suffocating darkness, as wide as the sky, as if every star had been snuffed, and the sun had turned into a singularity, absorbing all light into absolute nothingness.

He had heard theoreticians talk about the internal structure of a singularity. Inside, one would be in a gravity well so deep that no light, no signal, could ever escape. No matter how large the inside might be, the event horizon formed an absolute boundary, forever closing off any attempt to reach the stars outside. One might still be able to see the stars; the light from outside would continue to fall into the black hole and reach the eye of whomever was imprisoned there; but any attempt to reach them would simply use up more and more energy, and achieve nothing.

The theoreticians also said that the interiors of black holes were irrational, that the mathematical constants describing reality no longer made any sense.

Phaethon never before had known what that could mean. Now he thought he did.

Phaethon wiped the tears he was ashamed to find on his face. "Rhadamanthus, what are the five stages of grief?" "For base neuroforms the progression is: denial, rage, ne-

gotiation, depression resignation. Warlocks order their instincts differently, and Invariants do not grieve."

"I just remembered another event... It's like a nightmare; my thoughts are still clouded and unclear. I was actually living aboard the Phoenix Exultant, with my launch date less than a month away. I was that close to achieving it all. Then the radio call came from my wife's last partial, telling me what Daphne Prime had done. Denial was easy for me; during the long trip from Mercury to Earth, I lived in a simulation, a false memory to tell me she still was alive. The simulation ended last December when the pinnace dropped me on Ev-eningstar grounds.... I remembered all the horror and pain of living without her. A woman I had been just about to leave behind me! So I gave myself a rescue persona, a version of me without hesitation, guilt, fear, or doubt, and stormed off to confront the mausoleum where Daphne's body was held."

Phaethon drew in a ragged breath, then laughed bitterly.

"Ha! Eveningstar Sophotech must have thought me a fool just now! I gave the same arguments this morning as I gave last December. But that last time, in December, I was physically present, and in my armor, and no force on earth could stop me in my rage. I swatted the remotes aside which tried to hinder me. I broke Daphne's coffin and released assemblers to undo her nerve bondage, and wake her from her lifeless dreams. But the body was empty; they had downloaded her mind into the Mansion-memory of Eveningstar, and replaced all the mausoleum with synthetics, pseudo-matter, and hologram. Eveningstar prevented me from committing anything worse than an attempted crime, some minor property damage.

"I gave myself entirely to rage, and began to tear the mausoleum apart. The motors in my arms and legs amplified my strength till I was like Hercules, or Orlando in his rage. There were two squads of Constables by then, in ornithopters armed with assembler clouds. I tore up the pillars of Eveningstar Mausoleum by the roots and threw them. I scattered the mannequins of the Constables and laughed as their darts and par-alyzers glanced from my armor.

"They had to call in the military to stop me. I remember

the wall melted and Atkins stepped through. He was not even armed; he was naked, and dripping with life-water. They had gotten him out of bed. He didn't even have a weapon. I remember I laughed, because my armor was invulnerable; and I remember he smiled a grim little smile, and beckoned me toward him with one hand.

"When I tried to push him out of my way he just leaned, and touched my shoulder, and, for some reason, I flew head over heels, and landed in the puddle of melted stone he had stepped in through. He squeezed some of the life-water out of his hair and threw it over me. The nanomachines suspended in the water must have been tuned to the ones he used to disintegrate the stone. When I fell, the stone was like dust, utterly frictionless. It was impossible for me to get up, there was nothing to grip. Then, when he shook his wet hair at me, the nanomachines bound molecule to molecule with artificial subnuclear forces. The stone now formed one macromolecule, and my arms and legs were trapped. Invulnerable, yes, but frozen in stolid stone. No wonder Atkins despises me."

"I don't think he despises you, sir," said Rhadamanthus. "If anything, he is grateful that you allowed him to exercise

his skills."

Phaethon pressed his aching temples with his fingertips. "What did you say the third stage of grief was? Bargaining? The Eveningstar Sophotech did not press charges—she was delighted to have been the victim of the only half-successful attempt at violent crime in three centuries; the Red Manorials loved the drama, I suppose; all they wanted was a copy of my memories during the fight."

Phaethon remembered now the notoriety that had surrounded him. It was not just for the violence he had attempted. (As long as human passions were still legally permitted to exist in the human nervous system, there would always be violent impulses. Many people attempted crimes. There were six or seven attempts every century.) Phaethon's notoriety sprang from his position in society. Other men who gave in to moments of rage were usually primitivists or emancipated partials, people without resources, whom the Consta-

bles, guided by Sophotechs, easily could stop before they hurt anything.

But Phaethon was manor-born, who were considered the elite; and the Silver-Gray, in many ways, were the elite of the elite. The manorials had Sophotechs present in their minds, able to anticipate their thoughts, able to defuse violent problems long before they ever arose. No manor-born had ever committed a violent crime. Phaethon was the first.

In his armor, Phaethon could shut off all contact with the Sophotechs; his thoughts could not be monitored; his violent impulses could not be hindered by a police override. In his armor, Phaethon could act independently of any social restrictions. He was in his own private world; a small world, true, but it was all his own.

"The Red Manorials, perhaps, forgave me. But the Curia was not so amused. The penalty they imposed was forty-five minutes of direct stimulation of the pain center of my brain..." (Phaethon winced at the memory) "...but the Court suspended fifteen minutes from my sentence because I agreed to erase the rescue persona. Afterwards, the Curia ordered me to experience the memories and lives of the Constables I had humiliated, so that all their anger and frustration and pain happened to me. The fight did not seem so glorious any longer...

"That punishment I was glad to suffer; I knew I was in the wrong. The Curia and Eveningstar did not bargain, no. But the College of Hortators did.

"It was a devil's bargain. They found me during a moment of weakness. I destroyed my memory. Was I trying to commit suicide?"

"And what about now, young sir? Have you reached the state of resignation and acceptance?"

Phaethon straightened, wiped his face, squared his shoulders. He drew a deep breath. "I will never be resigned. Perhaps everything is not lost yet. Unless ..." Phaethon looked troubled. "Am I just fooling myself again? A recurrence of the denial part of the grief cycle?"

"You know I cannot take a Noetic reading of you at this

time. I do not know the state of your mind. You must avoid giving into fear or despair ... but you also must avoid giving in to false hopes."

"Very well, then. Maybe there are steps I can still take. Put a call in to that girl who is impersonating Daphne. She seems like a good person. Ask her if—"

"I am sorry sir, but she is no longer receiving your calls, nor am I allowed to transmit them." "What... ?!"

"None of the major telecommunication or telepresentation services will accept your patronage hereafter. Daphne Tercius has left instructions with her seneschal to refuse your calls, lest she be accused of aiding or comforting you, and therefore fall under the same prohibition under which you now fall." It took a moment for the implications of that to sink in. Phaethon closed his eyes in an expression of pain. "I thought that I would have some time to prepare, or that there would be some ceremony, or leavetaking."

"Normally there would be such, and all the participants in the boycott would exclude you at once. But things are in confusion."

"Confusion ... ?"

"You must recall that every other memory casket sealed by the Lakshmi Agreement, all across the planet, has opened up. Large sections of the memories of billions of people are returning to them; many are still confounded. All the channels are crowded with signals, young sir. Everyone is sending messages and questions to their friends and comensals; you have stirred the clamor of the world, I'm afraid."

Phaethon made a fist, but, insubstantial to his present scene on the Phoenix Exultant bridge, had nothing to strike, not even to make a dramatic gesture. "Scaramouche or Xenophon or Nothing or whoever is behind this is using the confusion to hide more evidence and release more viruses, no doubt. More evidence is being erased or falsified. And they must have predicted this would happen once I opened the memory box. But why? We are all taught that Earthmind is wise enough to foresee and counteract all dangers of this type be-

fore they arise. Their plan must be premised on the idea that that is not the case. They must have a Sophotech as wise as Earthmind, but not part of the Golden Oecumene Mentality. How else could they have done this? Is there no one we can warn?"

Rhadamanthus's voice: "I feel I should caution you, young sir, that no evidence exists that any attack of any kind has taken place. I am not presently capable of determining whether or not you are experiencing a hallucination or pseu-domnesia."

Phaethon said, "If the Hortators have not officially decreed their boycott of me in effect as yet, can you give me an indication of which efforts, merchant combines, or services will still accept my patronage?"

"Obviously the Eleemosynary Composition has not yet excluded you from the Hospice thoughtspace. Helion is continuing to pay the transaction costs and computer time for you connections with me, and for my conversation with you. The Eleemosynary Composition has left a message, to be given you should you inquire, to the effect that the previous agreement you had discussed has lapsed, and the offer withdrawn. Helion would like to have one last word outside before he shuts you out of my system. You might want to take this opportunity to have anything stored in my mansion-mind recorded into your own private thoughtspace; take any books or memories or proprietary information, alternate personalities, records, or anything else that is yours."

The image of the Phoenix Exultant bridge began to slip away. It flowed like water, out of the broken, window of the memory chamber. Phaethon's hands tried to grasp the corner of the nearest control mirror, the arms of the thronelike captain's chair. His chair. But his insubstantial fingers passed through the images and could not grasp them.

He seemed to stand in the chamber of memory, but his private thoughtspace, reacting to a command he had placed in it, long ago, at Lakshmi, had turned on. Cubes appeared in a circle around him. The two scenes were superimposed;

the cube icons seemed to float in midair among the shelves and sunlight of the memory chamber.

One of the cubes, a master program, near Phaethon's head, had a window floating in its upright face, showing the checklist of Phaeton's properties that he had planned to remove from the mansion memory.

Whatever sorrow had been on Phaethon's face was gone. His expression was stern, without being grim; it was not free from pain, but it was free from any acceptance of pain. His face might have been that of an ancient statue from the monument of a king.

He nodded to the checklist and raised a finger in the "run program" gesture.

Lesser memory caskets to the left and right of Phaethon, as if of their own accord, opened, and the cube icons flashed green colors to signal they were absorbing the information. The cubes turned black when they were full.

Much of the material was too long or too complex to be fitted into Phaethon's merely personal thought space; files were being deleted. A little flash of red light accompanied every deletion, as Phaethon had to approve the order each time. There were so many memory files being destroyed, and so many flashes of red light, coming faster and faster, that soon the room seemed as if it were burning around him, as if, without heat or noise, Phaethon were burning his old life. Here were thought works, centuries dormant, for which he would never have use again; memories of youthful tedium, or scenes redundant with other recollections, which afforded him no amusement, instruction, nor even nostalgia to retain; sciences now out-of-date; rough drafts for contemplation forms no longer practiced; the litter and rubbish of a long, long life at Rhadamanthus Mansion. There was no reason at all for tears to sting his eyes. He told himself it was all trash. And the checklist was one he remembered from Venus, from Lakshmi. He had made it before he signed the Agreement. He had made it knowing the Agreement would break. He had guessed this exile might come. He had planned... He had planned on this, on all of this.

But he had planned on an orderly exit, a withdrawal, perhaps after prevailing on his law case against Helion Secundus. With Helion's fortune, with entire income of the Solar Array in his hands, he could have bought the Phoenix Exultant out of hock, paid off his debts, and bought the few remaining supplies he needed, restocked his antihydrogen supplies, and departed.

No wonder the threat of the Hortator's exile had held no terror for him. He had been planning to leave the Golden Oecumene on a journey of centuries, or tens of centuries.

But his plan had been to have himself wait till after the Grand Transcendence in December was concluded, not to open the memory box prematurely, not to fall under the Hortator's boycott. Were he ostracized, Vafnir would not sell him antihydrogen, nor would Gannis sell Chrysadmantium.

He had not planned on being attacked by Xenophon, or by a virus that could have only been concocted by some non-Earth-mind Sophotech, a Sophotech that logic and history said could not possibly exist.

He glanced out the broken window. The image of the Phoenix Exultant hung against the darkness of the night sky, her golden hull like fire in the glare from the nearby giant sun. A dead hull.

Hadn't he had a backup plan? Wasn't there anything to salvage from this mess?

Phaethon raised his eyes from the circle of cubes.

In the background of his personal thoughtspace was a wheel of stars. It had been there every time he had turned on his personal thoughtspace. The fact that he hadn't recognized the background content of his personal area here should have been a clue that it was important.

The wheel of stars: it was impossible to believe he had not recognized it.

He reached out his hand. The galaxy was both smaller and closer than it appeared. He took it in his hand.

Like veins made of light was the umbrella of possible travel routes he had planned through the nearby stars. Where his finger touched a route, images unfolded to the left and right,

showing acceleration and deceleration calculations, estimates of local densities of space, notations of possible sources of volatiles for refueling in-flight, notes on where previous unmanned probes had gone (including summaries of scientifically significant discoveries and observations) and, more important, notes on places where unmanned probes had never gone.

The galaxy lay like a jewel in his hand. The stars were turning slowly, as the map ran through time adjustments for various periods in the projected voyage. Like a path of fire burned the trace of his first planned expedition. Branching world-lines for alternate routes reached out across stars and light-years.

It was beautiful. He would not give it up.

"Previous Phaethon, whoever you were: I remember you; I forgive you; I am you," he whispered. "I hated you for banishing my memory. I could not imagine what could have prompted me to butcher my mind in that way, what could have urged me to accept so much pain. Now I remember. Now I know. And I was right. It was worth the risk."

Somehow he would still save his plan. Somehow he would still save his dream....

Rhadamanthus, in his shape as a butler, cleared his throat. Phaethon looked up from the galaxy he held.

It was Helion.

Helion stood at the threshold of the memory chamber. His face was stern and sad. He was dressed out of period for Victorian England; instead, his self-image wore his snow white ablative armor of solar-station environment. He wore no helmet; Helion's hair shone like spun gold. The activity of Phaethon's deletions made red light flow across the scene like flame; the reflections burned in his armor.

Helion stepped into the chamber. Phaethon's private thoughtscape was excluded; the red flashes vanished, and the galaxy disappeared from his hand. The image of near-Mercury space disappeared from the window next to Phaethon. Instead, the broken window now let in sunlight, warm

summer air, the smell of flowers, the drone of bees, the scents

and sounds of the ordinary daylit world.

"Son," said Helion, "I've come for any last words we might

have with each other."

THE WARLOCK

Phaethon pointed two fingers. This was Helion himself, not a recording, a message persona, or a partial. "What do we have to say to each other, Father? Isn't it too late? Too late for everything?" Bitterness and irony showed on Phaethon's face. "You may be exiled yourself, just for speaking with me."

"Son—I had hoped it would never come to this. You are a fine and brave man, intelligent and upright. The boycotts and shunnings of the Hortators were meant to stop indecencies, deviations from acceptable behavior, acts of negligence and cruelty. They were meant to restrain the worst among us. They surely were not meant for you!" Sorrow was deeply graven on Helion's face. "This destiny is worse than we deserve."

The chamber seemed more real as Helion entered. It was a subtle change, one Phaethon might not normally have noticed. The colors were now brighter, the shadows of finer texture. The sunlight entering the many windows took on a rich and golden hue. Individual dust motes were now visible in the bright sunbeams, as was the wood grain of the polished wainscoting where the light fell, bringing rich glints and highlights from caskets and cabinets on the surrounding shelves.

Not only sense impressions were brighter and sharper in

Helion's presence. Phaethon felt more alert, at ease, and awake. Perhaps the circuits in Phaethon's brain stem and mid-brain had not been receiving very much computer time from Rhadamanthus; certainly the simulated sensations fed into Phaethon's optic nerve had not been of as high a quality as what Helion could afford for himself. Helion had been paying for Phaethon's computer time, but, quite naturally, reserved more time for his own use.

It was as if Helion's wealth and power surrounded him like an aura of light. Phaethon doubted that Helion was even aware of the effect on other people.

"Much of this destiny is of your making, Relic of Helion," said Phaethon bitterly. "I now remember that when they resurrected you, it was your voice who urged the Hortators to condemn my voyage; it was you who tried to kill my beautiful Phoenix Exultant. Why do you hate her so?"

"Perhaps I did dislike your ship at one time. But no longer. You know the reason why ... or do you?" Helion peered at Phaethon.

Phaethon said, "I cannot imagine. Gannis, perhaps, has motives I can guess. He wanted my ship for scrap. He thought it clever both to sell me the hull and foreclose on the lien. The College of Hortators had a deeper and more wicked purpose. The future I propose, one of humanity expanding through the universe, is one whose outcomes even Sophotechs cannot foresee. Even should there always be a core of worlds, centered on Earth, perfectly civilized and perfectly controlled, in my future, there will always be a frontier, a wilderness, a place which no Sophotech controls, a place where danger, adventure, and greatness still has scope. The Hortators' fear of war is mere excuse. It is life they fear, for life is change and turmoil and uncertainty. But you—I cannot believe you share their moral cowardice."

"We had this conversation before, my son. At Lakshmi, on Venus..." He looked into Phaethon's eyes. "You don't remember yet, do you?"

Phaethon said in a voice of anger: "More of my life was robbed from me than from you; and you had access to these

forbidden memories since before you met with the Peers. It will take me longer to adjust."

Helion was silent for a moment before he spoke.

"Your ship killed me, son."

Phaethon remembered what the man dressed as a Porphy-rogen Observationer had said, that Helion had sacrificed himself for a worthless boy. He had stayed at the Solar Array, when everyone else had fled, attempting to erect shields to protect certain areas of near-Mercury space. The Phoenix Exultant herself had been the "equipment" at Mercury Equilateral that Helion had tried to save from the fury of the solar

storms.

"You saved my ship...." whispered Phaethon, as the memory suddenly returned to him.

The hull armor had still been in sections at that time. The wash of particles from the sun would have disrupted the magnetic containment fields holding the antihydrogen, which, heated, would have expanded explosively, as a plasma. Every particle of the antimatter gas, encountering a particle of normal matter, would have totally converted its mass to energy, disrupting further magnetic containments, and igniting the most concentrated mass of antimatter ever gathered in one place. The superadmantium hull, invulnerable to all normal forms of energy, was still made of matter, and would have been converted to energy at the touch of antimatter.

"Damn your ship." Helion's voice grated. "It was you. You were aboard at that time. Outside of the range of the Mentality, beyond the reach of any resurrection circuit."

Phaethon turned away. He felt the hot blush of shame rising

to his face.

Helion stepped over and sat in one of the tall-backed ceremonial chairs flanking the doorway. He waited while Phaethon stood, staring at nothing, trying to grapple with the enormity of what he had heard, with what his memory was still bringing back to him.

"I—I'm so sorry, Father. I did not mean for any of this to

happen."

Helion clasped his hands and leaned with his elbows on

his knees, staring at the floor for a moment. Then, raising his head, he gave Phaethon a direct and earnest look. "No one meant for any of this to happen. But each of us was required by our consciences to do as he thought best. Even the College of Hortators might have been less quick to condemn your venture had you been willing to compromise, to wait, to listen to the opinions of others. The Hortators are neither villains nor fools nor cowards. They are honest men, attempting to cure our society of the one great fault which surrounds us; the danger, now that we all have so much power and freedom at our command, that reckless action will bring us to harm. Mostly they try to use social pressure to keep self-indulgent folk from harming themselves. Yours is the first case in hundreds of years of someone who threatened another."

"The worlds I intended to create would have been peaceful."

"The College might have believed that; had you not lost control of yourself in December, at the Eveningstar Mausoleum. You smashed the building, and broke the remotes and mannequins of the Constables."

Again Phaethon felt heat in his face. His voice was low: "I am very sorry, Father. And the more I remember, the less and less heroic my actions seem to have been. Maybe living since January without my memories has been good for me after all; my old anger seems childish to me now. But I still believe my dream to be a good one."

Helion said, "I once dreamed as you did."

"Yes ... ?"

"I have never told you the details surrounding your birth, Phaethon."

A stillness seemed to come into the chamber. Phaethon realized he was holding his breath. He had heard rumors. He had never heard the truth.

"You know you are taken from my mental templates, a version of me more brave than I have ever been, do you not? But what you don't recall—the origin you agreed to forget— is that you were created during one of the earlier Millennial Celebrations. One of the worlds constructed in dreamspace by

Cuprician Sophotech (who hosted that Celebration then as Aurelian does now) was my vision of a far future where mankind had expanded across the local volume of stars, some four hundred light-years in diameter. You were one of the characters in that story. You were the version of me, as Cuprician predicted I should be, should I live to see such an age."

Helion fell silent. He was staring out the windows, perhaps at the mountains of Wales; perhaps at something more distant. Phaethon said, "Is there more to my story ... ?" Helion stirred and brought his gaze back to Phaethon. "Not really. I was not famous nor well liked at that time. In fact, people called me a crackpot. During that Festival's Transcendence (they were held earlier in the year, at that time, in November) other Sophotechs recalculated Cuprician's premises and found them absurdly optimistic. When they reran the scenario, they found the distant colonies growing more and more inhuman, rash, and unreasonable. They concluded that even the most sane and stable of men, when there was no government to keep them all in awe, had no choice but to settle serious disputes by force. The scenario evolved into interstellar piracy and war. Many people were plugged into the dreamscape when their characters on Earth were destroyed by the colonial war. Vividly, seeming perfectly real, they died. They experienced their own death, and the death of everything they knew and loved. It only took one soldier aboard one single ship. He was armed with a few metric tons of antimatter. He burned the world. Naturally, the participants were horrified. I was horrified. Even the computer-generated character of the colonial warrior was horrified, to such an extent that he fell into a deep reverie, pondering himself and his place in the world, questioning all his basic values and beliefs. When the public outcry demanded that I erase the scenario, I was happy to comply; but the Sophotech stopped

me."

Phaethon could see what was coming. "You've got to be

joking, Father."

"No. The colonial soldier, the world burner, had made himself from a recording to a self-aware entity. By our laws,

anyone who makes a self-aware being by any means whatever, natural or artificial, deliberately or accidentally, becomes that parent of that child, and must raise and care for that child, and must have the appropriate natural paternal or maternal instincts inserted into his or her midbrain and hind-brain complex. That is why I made and married your mother, Galatea, may she rest in peace."

Galatea was not dead. At the age of four hundred she had divorced herself from Helion, left the Silver-Gray, and tuned her sense-filter and adjusted her memory to exclude him. Helion, at first, in the old days, often went to her, but, to her, he was no more visible than a ghost. Then one day, for reasons she had explained to no one, Galatea put her memories in archive, and descended into the sea, abandoning her flesh and merging her mind with the strange, old, unfriendly mass-minds that live scattered in a million microscopic cell bodies far below the waves.

Helion's face had the stiff look of sorrow it always had at the mere mention of Phaethon's mother's name. The sight of that sadness angered Phaethon, for now Phaethon was being told his mother had not been his at all.

"So I was born. I remember a youth and childhood. Where those false?"

"No. You were incarnated as a boy when you entered the real world."

"Why do I not remember the fictional life which came before my birth? Your pretended future? Don't tell me I agreed to forget that also!" Phaethon felt a sense of wonder and disgust. Was there anything at all in his life that was real?

"Everyone was afraid of you. You had the memory, skills, and personality of a planet killer. And once you learned who and what you were, you were happy to erase your past. Surely you can guess why?"

He knew the reason. "Because it was false." Helion nodded. "No one has been more in love with naked truth than you."

"Is that why I was named Phaethon? To remind me that I had burned the earth?"

Helion shook his head. "You picked that name yourself, after you joined the Consensus Aesthetic. But you adopted a slightly alternate version of the myth. You said that—"

A distant gong note rang. Rhadamanthus said, "Pardon me, Master Helion, but you asked to be interrupted whenever the channels cleared and the Hortators came on-line. They are

arriving now."

Phaethon heard distant sounds: the opening of the main doors, the murmur of voices, and, beyond that the clatter of carriages arriving at the front portico. These fictional noises were provided by the mansion dreamscape to represent the "arrival" of the members of the College of Hortators.

Helion stood. "Out of deference to me, the College has agreed to adopt the Consensus Aesthetic for the official record of the upcoming Inquest. Naturally, everyone's personal sense-filter can reorganize the information in whatever forms they would like, but the core document will record that the meeting took place in my version of Rhadamanthus Mansion. Will you come with me, Phaethon?" He gestured toward the door.

Phaethon took one last look at the memory chamber. The caskets were either open and empty, or displayed as if they had been burnt. The broken window no longer held a view of the glorious starship, the only one of her kind, which was no longer his.

There was nothing for him here.

The two men started down the stairs together. Phaethon saw that Helion's version of the mansion was somewhat larger and more splendid than Phaethon's. The staircase was a wide, sweeping semicircle leading down to an enormous entrance hall paved with white flagstones.

There were windows everywhere, wide and filled with

light.

Phaethon said, "If they remembered my origin, no wonder they were afraid when I bought an invulnerable ship and filled it with antimatter. But couldn't they tell reality from fantasy?"

Phaethon stopped on the stair, and took Helion's arm,

drawing him up short. Helion looked back curiously, and saw the beginning of fear on Phaethon's face.

"Tell me quickly. Does Daphne know? All our lives she called me a heroic character—a character—she didn't fall in love with me because of—because of that?!"

"I doubt she knew. Daphne was born of natural parents, actually womb born, the old-fashioned way, and raised in a Primitivist School that did not even have reincarnation. She ran away from her convent and joined the Warlocks of the Cataleptic Oneiromancer School when she was sixteen. It was not that many centuries ago; I doubt she has ever even heard of Cuprician."

Phaethon breathed a sigh and released Helion's arm.

They continued down the stair and across the bright hall. Their footsteps echoed on the marble.

Then Phaethon asked: "Why did you give up on the dream, Father? You know our sun only has a limited period of time in which to live."

"Longer, thanks to my effort."

"But still limited. We cannot stay in one small solar system forever. It's because you see yourself in my old character, don't you? The colonial warrior who killed the earth. That was a simulated extrapolation of you, wasn't it? And it scared you."

Helion did not answer the question. "Simulation technology is much better now. There is less guesswork involved. ..."

They passed a rank of empty suits of armor, enameled in white. Here were two tall doors of oak, inscribed with an open book crossed with a flail, and, beneath, a grail from which a fountain flowed; this was the emblem of the College of Hortators. This door had not been here before; Helion's version of the mansion now included an Inquest Hall. The murmur of voices came dimly from behind the doors.

"You should not be frightened, Father. The dream to conquer the stars is still a fine and noble one. Despite all, I am still in the right. My dream is right."

Helion stopped and stared at the doors. "Perhaps. But now

that dream is about to die, as are you. Daphne Prime is drowned beyond rescue; Daphne Tercius, who loves you, has no further reason to go on, since she sacrificed her future career in order to come plead with you. And, for myself, just when I have been declared a Peer, and have hopes of becoming a center of attention for the upcoming Transcendence, I find my son is about to be gone. And so my life is ruined too." He smiled sadly. "Who was it who said, 'Endless life breeds endless pain'?"

Phaethon could see Helion was thinking of Hyacinth Sep-timous, his best friend whom he had lost so long ago.

"Ao Enwir. 'On the Sovereignty of Machines.' " Phaethon said. He did not correct the misquote.

Then Phaethon forced a smile. "But I am not about to die, Father. Even if no one will sell me food or water, my armor lining can produce—"

"Orpheus Avernus has dumped your extra lives. You are no longer in the Mentality." "W-what... ?"

"Read the hypertext and fine print of your contract with your bank. They are obligated to delete the stored lives of anyone who falls under Hortator prohibition. It is a standard clause for all contracts with Orpheus; it was Orpheus who first gave the College so much social influence."

Phaethon opened his mouth to protest. Surely the Sopho-techs, infinitely wise, would not simply stand by and let him

die?!

He closed his mouth again. He knew what the Sophotech logic would say. Phaethon had not invented the Noumenal Recording system. Orpheus had. It belonged only to Orpheus, and he was free to dispose of his property in any peaceful and lawful fashion he saw fit. He could not be compelled by force to give his services or his property or his lifework to anyone with whom he did not wish to deal.

And Phaethon had freely signed that contract.

"As of this moment, my son, you are no longer immortal."

A sense of dread began to close in on Phaethon.

"Surely the Hortators have not yet posted an official decree—"

"It does not matter. Your attorney, Monomarchos, signed in your name a confession of judgment, don't you remember? You signed away your right to any appeal. There will be no second Inquiry Hearing; this meeting is merely an announcement."

"If they expect me to simply lie down somewhere and die, they are sadly mistaken!"

"That is exactly what they expect. They are not mistaken."

"There are people who survive exile."

"In fiction stories, perhaps. But even Lundquist in the old song was only exiled for a period of six hundred years. Yours is permanent. You might be able to jury-rig repairs to the nanomachinery in your cells which regenerates your wounds and restores your youth. But nanomachines draw their power from isotopic decay of the large atoms at the base of their spiral chains; no one will sell you life-water to replenish those atoms."

"Life-water is the cheapest nanotechnology our society makes...." Phaethon began.

Helion's voice was flat. "It is not your society anymore. You are alone. No one will sell you a drop of water."

Phaethon closed his eyes and bowed his head.

Helion's face was grave. "And do not ask Daphne to smuggle food or medicine to you; you would only involve her in the same downfall."

"I won't, Father," Phaethon whispered.

Helion stepped forward, taking Phaethon by the shoulders. Phaethon raised his head. Helion said, "I see that you call me 'Father' instead of 'Relic' May I ask why?"

Phaethon shook his head. "Because I don't think any of it matters anymore. Everything is over. I've ruined everyone's lives and destroyed my own dreams ... and now I have nothing and everything is over. We argue, you and I. We argue often. All those arguments are over. We're never going to see each other again, are we?"

They looked deeply into each other's eyes.

"Forgive me if I have not been the best of fathers, my son." "If you will pardon me that I have not been the best of

sons."

"Don't say that!" Helion's voice was hoarse. "You are braver and brighter than I ever could have hoped.... I am so very proud of you I cannot say...."

They embraced.

Sire and scion whispered good-byes to each other.

The doors opened, but the Inquest Chamber was not beyond. Instead, a large anteroom waited, carpeted in red and burgundy. Tall windows on the left threw sunlight on a cluster of low tables, chairs, and divans, standing ashtrays and formulation rods. To the right were Chinese screens and wardrobes.

A set of doors at the far end bore the book, grail, and flail emblem of the College. Evidently the actual chamber was

beyond.

Phaethon frowned at the nearest formulation rod; it was an anachronism, dating from the period of the Warlock Coun-terprogressions in the Fifth Era.

Helion was looking at Rhadamanthus for an explanation. "Who added this chamber to my house?"

"Master, I thought you would want to change from your solar armor to proper period dress," said the overweight butler, pointing toward the wardrobes. "Also, you have a guest who insisted on speaking to Mr. Phaethon before the hearing commenced. This was very much in character with your previous instructions to me on these matters, and an extrapolation of your personality assured me you would not mind. I hope I did not incorrectly anticipate your wishes?"

Helion looked impatient. "What guest do you imagine I would tolerate to use up the last few moments my son and I might ever have together?"

One of the chairs, facing away from them, had a back tall

enough to hide from view the figure who had been sitting in it. Now he stood, a tall shape in a hooded robe of patterned red and gold webbed with colored threads and scaly with beadwork and chips of glass. The back of the hood was richly ornamented with beadwork as well, and bore the upright crescent that the hoods of king cobras might display, the sign of Brahma. The motion of standing sent highlights like embers trembling down from the narrow shoulders through the fabric.

Still facing away, the figure spoke. His voice was smooth, musical, and exotic. "Peers often extend to each other these small courtesies. Your time in our midst is short; you cannot be expected to acclimate yourself to all our graces instantly."

He turned. His face was dusky; his eyes were large, liquid, magnetic. A Hindu caste mark gleamed in his forehead, beneath his hood a tasseled head cloth hid his hair.

Helion pointed with two fingers. "Ao Aoen. It is a pleasure to see you." His tone was flat, belying his words. "I would have thought the small courtesies Peers extend to each other would have included avoiding the introductions of anachronisms into a mansion famed for its authenticity."

"Fakirs, swamis, and magicians from the Orient figure prominently in the literature of your Victorian age. Surely one would not expect the chief of all chiefs of the Warlocks to represent himself as a stiff, rationalist, tradition-loving Englishman? Or... do you mean the formulation rods? But I needed a magic rod to stir my charms. Data flows and grows and shows strange lives and inner secrets of their own once a sufficient formulation is empatterned to allow an intuition to be triggered. I have woven your lives from one map to another, to see symmetries and signs which linear thinking can never display. Are you angry? I trust not. My depictions have shown me a danger. But have also show me a way."

"A way .,. ? Please tell us more, my good fellow Peer. I am certain you have engaged our interest," Helion said pleasantly. Phaethon knew Helion disliked Warlocks and their riddles, their nonrational methods of thought. But Helion showed no impatience that Phaethon could see (or perhaps

Helion broke Silver-Gray rules, and had Rhadamanthus running his face).

"A way to escape the danger I foresee." Ao Aoen folded his arms, tucking his hands into the voluminous sleeves of his robe.

There was a moment while Phaethon and Helion waited for Ao Aoen to continue. Helion broke the silence: "We lend our ears most earnestly, my good Peer. Pray continue."

The figure smiled inscrutably. "But the words are meant for Phaethon's ears alone. They are eager to fly from my tongue like birds. But the instincts of birds in spring return them to their destined home, not elsewhere."

Phaethon was surprised when Helion stepped to a nearby table, picked up a cigar trimmer lying there, and slashed his own palm, drawing blood. Helion winced and turned around, holding up his hand and spreading his reddened fingers.

Ao Aoen bowed deeply, obviously impressed. "I understand. Forgive me. You and Phaethon are of one blood; the message must be meant for you both." Phaethon was not sure whether Ao Aoen was impressed because Helion's symbolic gesture had been so Warlock-like or because the reputation of Rhadamanthus House ensured that, if Helion's self-image showed a wound, Helion's real brain would experience the real proportional pain.

Ao Aoen turned to Phaethon. "Have you considered, my dear Phaethon, that if you were a character in a romance, you would undoubtedly be the villain?"

Phaethon glanced at Helion. Was this a reference to his origin? If not, the coincidence seemed odd. On the other hand, the superintuitive structures of the Warlock brain tended to find order in odd coincidences. "What do you mean, sir? Please speak plainly."

Ao Aoen spread his arms, making many small circles with his hands, and smiling. "Consider: you are a rich and selfish individualist, a heartless engineer, deaf to all pleas, who is willing to sacrifice family, friends, and foes alike, to pursue one overproud design. You have used yourself ruthlessly, and have deceived the College of Hortators, and broken your word