The Golden Transcendence

AND AGES YET UNGUESSED COME

Helion was the last man on Earth to leave the High Transcendence. In it, he saw a vision of the future. His future. While it lasted, he was the center of attention, of controversy, of comment, of censure, of praise. It was his time.

During the High Transcendence, Helion was not aware of himself as his own person, any more than a man whose whole concentration is focused on some task of exacting skill, or on some sense-dissolving ecstasy, is self-aware. Instead, all the awareness of thought was composed of thought. And even in the same way as a work of art, or an excited conversation among close friends, can take on a life of itself, the thought of thought took on its own life. Helion's dream radiated out into the thoughtspace like the rays of a sun. He found his thoughts and half-thoughts picked up by others and completed, others whose thoughts, in turn, were fulfilled by others yet, reflected upon, brightened, polished, returned better than they left, the way responding planets, filled with life, send back then-bright reflections to the central sun, who, without those green planets, is barren himself.

Each participant was justly proud of his contribution to the overall result, no one able to claim credit for the whole, in the same way that a school of thought or a movement in the arts or sciences has no one author, but neither is the genius of the founders of that school obscured or made anonymous.

Within the vision, Helion, a thousand years from now, stood on the balconies of his Solar Array, housed in a body unimaginable to modern science, one in which the singularity science of the Second Oecumene could weave neutronium into his bones, and power bis nervous system from a heart like a black hole. In this time to come, the folded origami of space itself would be one more tool affecting the science, art, philosophy, of those few human-shaped beings left.

For in that age, a thousand years hence, with the war with the Second Oecumene still just beginning, Helion was among the few who could afford the affectation of continued human appearance. By the graceful standards of the modern age, that future time would be an age of lead, colorless and drab, with flamboyance and frivolity long dead, all sacrificed to the needs of war.

Necessity, grim necessity, would harass and haunt each step and thought of the citizens of the next Transcendence, to be held under the guidance of a Sophotech not yet designed, to be called, no doubt, Ferric Sophotech.

Helion stood and looked out upon the many parallel rows of supercolliders, hanging like bridges of gold, like highways of light, across the surface of the photosphere, the solar equator ringed not once, but many times, with machines of prodigious power, creating strips of golden adamantium.

Raising eyes equipped with senses not yet discovered, which could penetrate, by means of ghost-particle echoes, all opacities of darkness or of blinding light, Helion sent his gaze on high, and saw, towering infinitely above him, space-elevators, rising like beanstalks out from the unthinkable gravity of the sun, extending upward, endlessly, past the orbits that had once held Mercury and Venus. From the cities at the "tops" of those towers, more towers reached out, these made of energy, not neutronium, and ran entirely across the system. These rivers of light ran to positions in the ice belts and Oort clouds, where truly massive spheres, more than planets in diameter, housed Sophotechs of new design. These Sophotechs were utterly cold, constructed of subatomic particles held in superdense matrixes in vast blocks of "material" in the state of absolute zero temperature. Only this icy perfection was dense enough and rigid enough and predictable enough to house the new generation of thinking machines.

Along these towers was more surface area than the present of the whole Golden Oecumene. Land cubic was cheaper than air. The cores of the towers would contain Second Oecumene singularity fountains, so that energy was cheaper than either. Helion, looking up, was able to "see" the great vessels of gold, hundreds of kilometers in length, piloted by his further scions, braver versions of himself, Bellerophon and Icarus. The sons of Helion were eager to follow into the abyss of space their eldest brother, Phaethon, of whom no report had yet returned, for Phaethon maintained strict radio silence during his many long voyages.

The shining ships of the sons of Helion each held worlds in their memories, endless menageries, transcripts of all minds and souls of any in the Golden Oecumene who volunteered to be recorded. In this way. should enemy assault somehow elude the complex protections, and the Solar System be destroyed, the Golden Oecumene, as long as a single ship survived, would live again. And what Helion of that day and age used for eyes turned outward again, seeing distant stars and constellations, hearing the pulse of music, the mathematics of rational conversation, not from one, but from scores of worlds.

Some colonies were decoys, entire invented civilizations, dreamed to the last detail and nuance, but existing only in Sophotechnic imaginations. These were decoys meant only to lure Silent Oecumene soldiers down to worlds that seemed populated but which were, in fact, merely Atkins, Atkins in endless numbers, waiting with endless patience to destroy any who dared make war.

But other colonies were colonies in truth, called by fanciful names: the Silver Oecumene and the Quick-Silver, founded at Proxima and Wolf 359; and the Oecumenes of Bronze or Orachilcum near Tau Ceti; or the warlike Oecumene of Adamantium, circling the dragon star Sigma Draconis; and the Nighted Oecumene, founded by the Neptunians in the deep of space, far from any sun, but seething with activity, noise, and movement.

These colonies were those brave enough or foolish enough to taunt the Silent Lords, by revealing their locations in signs of fire, allowing to escape into the void the radio noise and activities of industry, of planetary engineering, and the establishment of further Solar.

But there would be more colonies than this, several civilizations-younger artificial worlds and systems, not yet ready to face the Silent Lords in combat.

Each younger, quiet Oecumene relied, at first (not unlike her foe) on silence to mask her activities; she would wait for some future day to erupt into a First Transcendence of her own. On that day, the new Oec-umene would end her long childhood, raise her radio arrays, and sing out to the surrounding stars of what accomplishments, arts, sciences, and advancements she had made during her long centuries of quiet. And she would have her version of Atkins, as if with trumpets sounding from a battlement, send out a general challenge to the Silent Lords, daring them to combat, warning them away. But each would also have their version of Ariadne Sophotech singing like a siren to the stars, inviting the Silent Ones to give up their sick, insane crusade, to rejoin the body of mankind, to rest from the weariness of war and hate.

As Helion stood and looked out, an image of Rhadamanthus stepped up quietly behind Helion on his balcony, appearing like a color sergeant from a regiment of British riflemen. Rhadamanthus asked: "Well, sir, Ferric Sophotech will soon begin the next Transcendence. Looking back over the past thousand years, is milord satisfied with what the future turned out to have held?"

Helion reflected. "I am pleased that the cacophile movement failed. When Ungannis repudiated all her beliefs, and became Lucretia, my wife (and finally got all the wealth she wanted), I think it was my influence which helped, once and for all, to put down that selfish mess of whiners. I think it was because I was the cen-ter of the last Transcendence, and everyone who saw my vision of the future was inspired. That satisfies me. But..."

"But what?"

"Rhadamanthus, we should have disbanded the Hor-tators when we had the chance! I loved them, I fought for them, and it disheartens me to see them now. The force of conscience and tradition, even in the moat easy of times, is often too critical, too meddling, too harsh. But in times of war and public danger, that same force is invested with an aura of sanctity, of patriotic piety, which renders it a terrible and unreasonable weapon."

Rhadamanthus said gently: "Of all the Hortators, only that single one who voted against Phaethons ban, Ao Prospero Circe of the Zooanthropic Incarnation coven, was seated in the next session. All the others were exposed to public humiliation. But abolish the College altogether as an institution? No, sir. Without it, the Parliament would have arrogated to itself dangerous privileges, as is often the case in time of war, ordering all citizens to military service; seizing control of the money supply; requiring that no disloyal communications be spoken or written, thought, or said; and commanding all citizens to program their emotions to unalterable patriotism. Surely such things must be done, for the sake of the necessities of war; but surely it is a nightmare to allow such things to be done on anything other than a voluntary basis."

Helion looked downcast. His melancholy spirit brought a solemn quiet to his eyes. "And yet, we may take comfort in this war. It is so remote, so long be-tween thrust and parry, and operates across such dis-tances, that whole ages flow by without rumor of the flames and pain and death which have taken place, now here, now there. And further, the languid spirit which might have otherwise descended on mankind is startled awake by the sound of battle trumpets in our half-slumbering ear. We might all have sunk down into dreams, by now, had not something real, and cruel, and necessary, forced us all to action."

Rhadamanthus looked politely nonplussed. "Well, milord, that is not quite true. Actually, not true at all. Wars cost. Industry suffers; innovation lags; the spirit of joy is quelled; delight is replaced by fear. Respect for life is cheapened. Hatred (which is the universal enemy of all things) is no longer despised; instead, hatred is now welcomed and applauded and justified, and called patriotic.

"Even a war as distant and slow and strange as this one, has harmed us all, and cheated us of many fine delights and freedoms we would otherwise enjoy. It is tragedy, mere tragedy, with no such benefits as milord would like to pretend."

Helion looked at him. "And yet there is glory in it also, and many brave acts. Humanity at its finest."

Rhadamanthus said; "If milord will forgive me, I must say, there are certain things about mankind which we machines will never understand. I truly hope we never understand. Would you like to see humanity at its finest? Look up." And the image raised its hand to point. There was one particular star to which he pointed.

Music, many years in transit, from that distant star, at this moment fell around Helion, and his many unimaginable senses came awake. The star herself shifted in her spectral characteristics and apparent luminosity, as if a Dyson's sphere, transparent until that moment, suddenly took on a gemlike hue or polarized all the radiation output into coherent communication-laser pulses; or as if some Solar Array, vast beyond dream, webbing the entire surface of the star, tamed all the light shed into one huge symphony of signals.

The star trumpeted with challenges, and a new Oecumene blared her name out into the wide night, boasting of her accomplishments, shining in the radio light shed by her First Transcendence: the Phosphorescent Oecumene, she called herself, the Civilization of Light, founded by Phaethon and Daphne and their children.

This star was farther than any other colony had been, and safer, for no ship of the Silent Oecumene.

cold, slow, quiet ships, would reach so far for centuries to come.

Even at this point in history, the Silent Ones had no such technology to allow them to build a Phoenix Exultant. How could they? Such a thing required a supercollider and energy source the size of Jupiter to make the metal (and the Silent Ones, long ago spread from Cygnus X-l, living in hiding, nomads, would never dare to reveal their positions by building such a thing). And, even if they did build one, any ships whose drives were kept baffled and cold would never reach the velocities required to catch the bright, loud, roaring, fiery Phoenix Exultant in her flight.

Helion squinted and called more senses to his aid, and delicate instrumentation. For there, in the halo of sudden radio noise and song and motion and light surrounding what had been, till now, merely one other uncivilized star, he saw (or thought he saw) that bright sharp signature, intensely Doppler-shifted, which comes of massive amounts of antimatter totally converting to energy, receding at nearly the speed of light.

Helion said, "This is the sign of Phaethon."

Rhadamanthus said, "Now, perhaps, now he finds more joy in life, having survived so many strange adventures, and the odd horrors of the discovered colonies of Cygnus X-l. But he is forever beyond their reach now. The tiny mote of light which depicts his most recent acceleration burn has taken hundreds of years to reach our eyes. Phaethon flies so far, so swiftly, that even the light which carries news of him is left behind."

Helion said, "Phaethon paused in his flight, far beyond the reach of his foes, to wait for the wakening of this, his latest child. Now she is grown, and calls herself the Oecumene of Light; and on he fares again, blazing!"

So he stood on the balcony, gazing upward, hoping this group of Transcendence messages from the Oecumene of Light would contain messages, also, from Phaethon, to him.

"How I miss him, Rhadamanthus. How I regret..."

Rhadamanthus now leaned and touched Helion's shoulder, wakening him from his dream. "Sir. That was only a projection. It is the Month of Resumption, now, when everyone must return to the burden of being no more than himself for another thousand years. Phaethon has not departed yet. Even before leaving this system, he begins the task that will occupy him for countless thousands of years; already he is chasing enemies."

"No, that was a vision. The war I saw has not yet begun. ..."

"Once Phaethon is done, the Phoenix Exultant shall return from her refitting at Jupiter one last time to Mother Earth, to pick up Daphne Tercius. Sir, it is not too late."

Helion sat up in bed and looked around his bedchamber in Rhadamanthus House. Outside the window, a rose garden, blooms gone, lifted empty thorns beneath a slate gray English winter sky. Shadows softened the dark rafters above. There was a fire in the grate, but little could it dispel the cold, the gloom of the January day.

"Not too late ... ?" muttered Helion.

"To go. To go with him, sir. To follow your son to the stars."

The Phoenix Exultant was in trans-Neptunian space. At 350 AUs the sun was only one of the brighter stars. The ship's three-kilometer-wide main dish had been deployed, hanging in space nearby, and was pointed back toward the Inner System, synchronized with orbital radio-lasers near Jupiter. More ship fuel was being used to maintain radio communication than to decelerate the hundred-kilometer-long vessel.

Those aboard who were still within the Transcendence had slowed their personal times to a mere snail crawl. Hours passed between a signal sent from this distance and any reply from the Inner System Sophotechs. There was a slightly shorter lag-time during communion with the Invariant populations in the cities in space at the leading and trailing Trojan points in Jupiter's orbit.

Phaethon had undergone naval vastening, and was one with the ship. He was in four-on four-off, spending every other watch in the transhuman state of consciousness. However, as the ship approached her goal, Phaethon was finding the memory-distractions too great, the transitions too jarring, and woke up.

There he was, in his specially designed high-acceleration body, in his Chrysadamantium armor, in the captain's chair, on the main bridge.

Exactly where he was meant to be.

Aboard in the ship's mindspace were the two wardens from the Dark-Gray Mansion, Temer Lacedai-mon, and Vidur-yet-to-be. For legal purposes, and to fill out the memory of Vidur Lacedaimon once he was born, this partial was standing in the place of his unborn principle.

The main deceleration burn had ended, and the grav-ity was only at two or three times Earth normal, so the Lacedaimonians were able to manifest themselves in physical bodies on the bridge.

Vidur Lacedaimon wore a black nanomachine coating, much like Phaethon's own inner garment. The inner coat was webbed with vertical formulation rods.

to assist the several Warlock Wolf-minds Vidur kept stored in lower compartments of his mind; the inner coat contained a para-matter generator and a set of templates, to allow Vidur to materialize any additional clothing or gear he might require.

Temer Lacadaimon was a Dark-Gray, and was concerned with tradition just as much as any Silver-Gray manorial; but his traditions were strange and grim to Phaethon. He did not appear as a Second Era Englishman (as a Silver-Gray would have done). Instead, he wore a police uniform from the late Sixth Era, a symbiot that was grown into his skin cells, but which left his hands and head free. This symbiot kept Temer warm and well fed, protected him from acceleration shock or blood loss. Upon impact, it would stiffen into armor; reflective tissues became visible when ambient energy or laser-light impinged on the symbiot surface. ' The symbiot's name was Mirnmur; and it was ten thousand years old, for it had been granted immortality by Orpheus to commemorate Temer's grandfather, Pausanias, who had worn Mimmur during the Sixth Era Riot Control police actions that had claimed his life. The uniform was dark gray in hue, of course.

Holstered at his belt was a variable-energy baton, whose grip was slick and black with age. This weapon was named Widow-maker, and it was even older than the uniform.

In the circuits of the weapon, the New College had prepared the multiple simulations of every death, of all the pain, loss, and grief of all widows, orphans, lost partners, lost selves, which so many would have suffered for so long, had Xenophon or his agents successfully used the Phoenix Exultant to attack the helpless Golden Oecumene during Transcendence. Temer carried a million purgatories' worth of pain with him, so that, when Xenophon was caught, he could be killed not once but as many times as he would have killed hi-victims, had his plans succeeded.

To see a civilized man carrying such a deadly antique reminded Phaethon of Atkins, and of the old soldier's habit of carrying a ceremonial sword. With ha mind still haunted by the visions from the Transcendence, Phaethon was surprised to find how normal the sight looked to him. He was shocked that he was not shocked.

Vidur said, "The New College, when it is formed, will applaud you for this donation of your time, and the use of your ship."

Phaethon smiled, and sent the smile onto the ship channels, so that the two wardens could see it through his faceplate. "Gentlemen, I am honored; and yet I cannot entirely overlook the fact that, for good or for ill, I will be beyond the reach of the applause, or the censure, of the College of Hortators, in a very little time from now. I plan to return only once more to Earth, to finish resupplying, and to pick up crew."

Temer said, "You are young yet, Phaethon. Eventually, you will return from star voyaging, or human civilization, in ships yet unbuilt, of designs yet undreamed, will overtake you. It may be a thousand years from now, or ten thousand, or a hundred; but you and I will meet again. You will not be the only one to travel among the stars, I promise you that."

Phaethon saw Vidur smile at Temer's comment. Young? Phaethon supposed that to a man not yet properly born, the difference between a four-thousand-year-old and an eleven-thousand-year-old did not seem that great.

The ship-mind said, "We are approaching the alleged source of the ghost-particle signals."

Diomedes was not physically present, but an image of him was projected from the ship-mind space where he lived into the sense-filters of the men on the bridge. Being a collateral member of the Silver-Gray, Diomedes had his image enter through the air lock, had it cast a shadow, gave his footsteps echoes, and had it walk across the whole length of the bridge to approach the three men, and so on, rather than having a self-image fade in out of nowhere. The image was dressed in the normal costume of the Silver-Gray; coat, tie, jacket, shoes.

Diomedes said, "I've made a second copy of myself, so I can still participate in the Transcendence while helping you here, Captain-may I call you Captain?"

Phaethon said, "Certainly. But you will not get paid until you sign my articles."

"Be that as it may; my 'upper-brother' still in the Transcendence has done a much more thorough analysis than I have done. Hmph. He had help. Mars-mind invented new analytical tools for combing through the data...."

Phaethon said, "Does he confirm our results?"

"He does. Ghost particles from this point in space are being rotated into virtuality, transmitted to variable broadcast receivers around Triton and Nereid, and rotated back into reality. Xenophon was meshed with the Neptunian Duma when the Duma was brought into the Transcendence."

"Is Xenophon still there?" asked Phaethon. "In the Transcendence?"

Diomedes said, "My upper self and I think so. Look.'"

The mirrors on the bridge came to life. Most remained blank: heat and paniculate matter, electromagnetic energy, was the same as the normal background of empty space here. But the Silent Oecumene-built ghost-particle array aboard the Phoenix Exultant was receiving pulses of seminonexistent waves from an area less than one AU distant. A repeated image technique allowed a shadowy picture to form in one mirror.

Here was a hermit cell, webbed with antidetectioa gear, floating in space, hidden inside a ball of ice half a mile across, a cometary head.

The gear detected a ghost-particle array, perhaps as small as several yards across, exchanging signals with a transponder near Neptune.

Vidur scowled. "So Xenophon has already seen the next ten thousand years of our plans and goals, assessed our strength, counted our troops."

Temer said, "The disadvantage of life in a free and open society-we've forgotten how to lock our doors.""

Diomedes held up a single finger. "One. We've only got one trooper. Don't need to be a Sophtech to count that high."

Phaethon said, "If one were equal to one according to the math of these Swans from Cygnus, we'd have less trouble from them."

Diomedes said, "The Transcendence did not predict that the Silent Ones could maintain a full-scale war against us for any length of time. Um. At least what an entity to whom a thousand years is but a day regards as 'a long time.' ..."

Vidur spoke with the certainty very young men tend always to have: "Our predictions were unduly optimistic, I am sure, and made the spy to smile."

Temer said, "He would smile just as much if our predictions overestimated the Silent Oecumene strength as underestimated."

Phaethon said, "He must have seen this ship, even at this distance. We are huge, and we make a lot of noise, and our stern is toward him as we decelerate. What is be thinking? Is this a trap?"

Temer said, "Suppose he had an escape ship-the Phoenix should be able to outrun anything in space. And how far could he go? I think he is saving fuel. He is going to be caught in any case."

Diomedes looked sidelong at Phaethon, and raised a hand to hide a discreet cough. This was one of the Silver-Gray traditions, indicating a wish for a private word or two.

Phaethon's sense filter linked with Diomedes. An imaginary solarium appeared around them. It did not quite have the usual Silver-Gray attention to detail. Instead of an English garden scene appearing outside the eastern windows of the porch, an image of Phaethon on his throne, continuing a conversation with Vidur and Temer, appeared, so that the two men could track what was happening in the outer reality.

Diomedes sat. "You seem troubled, friend."

Phaethon poured himself a cup of imaginary tea. He sipped it, staring moodily into the middle distance. He said, "I wish I could remember what it was I had been thinking during the Transcendence. My body, acting more or less on its own, sent the Phoenix Exultant out here. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Diomedes said, "There is no mystery. The Golden Oecumene has only one operating ghost-particle array. And it is aboard this ship."

"Is Atkins aboard?"

"I am sure he must be."

"The ship brain is still half-asleep. I don't even know what is really going on."

Diomedes leaned across the table and patted Phaethon's arm in a friendly fashion. "Don't fret so! Once the Transcendence is concluded, and all are restored to their normal states, communication lines will be restored, records will be set back in order. In the meanwhile, look at the fine gifts we all got! You now have something like Helion's multiple parallel brain compartments, but with no speed loss; I have a mechanism for interpreting Warlock-type intuitions using a subroutine. See how insightful I am these days?"

Diomedes leaned back and inspected his friend. "Hm. My intuition tells me you are still uneasy."

Phaethon sighed. "I am getting tired of always acting on blind faith. When I do not have gaps in my memory, I have gaps in my knowledge. I always seem to be forced to trust that either my old self, or some Sophotech, has thought out the details of what I am about to do, and has already arranged everything to come out right-it is a childish way to behave. I am tired of being a child."

Diomedes made his eyes crinkle up with a smile. "You are so impatient to leave this 'utopia'?"

"It was never a Utopia. It is a good system. Maybe the best system. But in reality, everything has a cost. The cost of living in a system with fairly benevolent giant superintellects, frankly, is that you have to live as I have done. Blindly."

He tuned one of the windows in the solarium to a view of the nearby stars. Like jewels, they glittered against the velvet dark.

He said, "I yearn for the solitude of empty spaces, Diomedes. There, finally, I shall stand on my own; and if I fall, the fault will be mine and mine alone."

Diomedes said, "I take it there is still something missing from your life?"

Phaethon said, "There is still a gap in my memory. A period of two weeks from seventy years ago is gone; even Rhadamanthus does not have a record of it. I visited a colony of purists living to the east of Eveningstar Manor. Records show I shipped a container to Earth, to the enclave where Daphne was originally born. Telemetry data indicate there may have been biological material aboard. A fortnight. It's a blank. Even the Transcendence could not fill in what was missing. I was aboard ship and cut off from all communication."

"The canister? You have no medical officers or in-spection services on Earth?"

"We are not Neptunians, my good Diomedes. Who would be so rude as to open up someone else's private container? I suppose the purists could have hired any inspectors they wished to examine their packages for them; but purists do not keep system-linked records."

Diomedes posted a rile where he enumerated the parallels between the purists and the Eremites of beyond-Neptune. Neither group entered mind-links of any kind, not even Transcendence. While the rest of civilization celebrated, they remained on their farms and blue houses. He said aloud: "We tend to think the Sophotechs know everything. But what they don't know, they don't know, do they?"

Phaethon stared at the image of the nearby stars, and scowled.

Diomedes said plaintively, "But nothing so very important could have happened in two weeks could it?"

Meanwhile, in the outer conversation, Temer was staring thoughtfully at the chamber hidden in the flying iceberg, watching the readings on the volume of information passing back and forth from the chamber to Neptunian transponders.

"There is someone still alive there," said Temer. "There is too much information volume for an automatic process. This is a mind participating in the Transcendence. He may not be aware of us because he is involved in the visions."

Phaethon said, "Someone still alive, yes, or someone left behind."

Temer turned to him. "You doubt the story told by Xenophon? That the Silent One broadcast himself here across the abyss of space, and was picked up by Neptunian radio-astronomers?"

"Everything the Swans say turns out to be a lie." said Phaethon. "Why not that, also a lie?"

"Do you think there is a vessel like yours? A silent Phoenix?"

Phaethon shook his head. "Worse. There could be a vessel better than mine. The Nothing Machine housed in the surface granulations of a microscopic black hole event horizon. Imagine a larger version of the same thing, accelerated to near light-speed. What armor does it need, except its own event horizon? Any particle it struck in flight would be absorbed. No matter how massive the black hole was made, the singularity fountains at Cygnus X-l could have provided the energy to accelerate it. How could such a thing be seen by our astronomers in flight? It would absorb all light."

Terrier said, "X-ray or gamma point sources would emerge as swept-in particles were sheared by tidal forces. Something for us to look back over astronomical records to check."

Vidur said, "Look. A finer-grained image is being rendered."

It was true. The ghost-particle array now showed some internal details of the ice-locked chamber. The ship mind hypothesized a possible view, based on the fuzzy images, the cloaked echoes of energy discharges. The hypothetical picture showed Xenophon hanging like a blue sphere, in his most heat-conserving form, in fee middle of the tiny chamber.

Diomedes raised his hand. "Xenophon is aware of us."

Instantly, all four of them were embraced into the ship-mind, and the information flowed back to the In-ner System, to Neptune, and to this far and lonely outpost, and flooded through them.

It was the final thought of the fading Transcendence.

And Xenophon was there.

Xenophon was using a sophisticated Silent Oecumene mind-warfare technique to watch the Transcendence (or tiny surface parts of it) without joining. This was Xenophon, hidden, encrypted, surrounded by walls of privacy, in a small cell, attached by a long, invisible tether of radio-laser communication, to the Neptunian Embassy at Trailing Trojan City-Swarm.

For a moment of Transcendence time, which was several days of real time, the last movement of the Transcendence watched him watching.

The thought preoccupying all the gathered minds was this: Perhaps there was still some hope that Xenophon could be salvaged or reformed.

Xenophon was allowed to see, in the deepest thoughts of the Golden Oecumene, the honest awareness of the futility of the Silent Ones and all their irrational philosophy. The war would probably not be as long as Helion's projection had extrapolated. The Nothing Machine's ability to produce copies of itself was severely limited by the fact that, unless all copies maintained, somehow, a complete uniformity of opinion and thought-priority, conflicts would arise between them.

Such conflicts had to be resolved by violence, since the Nothing philosophy eschewed reason.

Foresight of that coming violence would require the Master Nothing to make the copies and lesser Nothings as weak, stupid, fearful, and un-innovative as was possible, given their tasks.

Colonizing new star systems with hosts of stupid and uncreative machines as colony managers was surely to be a series of slow, nightmarish failures. The empire of the Silent Ones, if it existed at all, would be a small one. Perhaps they had not even left their home star at Cygnus X-l yet.

If so, then Phaeton's first mission there might resolve matters quickly. This "war" might be over even before the planned first warship, the Nemesis Lacedai-mon, was launched by the New College.

What, then, was the point of any of Xenophon's efforts? Why had he helped this madness? Why did he still support a cause doomed to failure?

At this point Xenophon realized these thoughts were directed at him; that the minds on which he was spying were watching him, patiently watching him.

Giving him one last chance to be reasonable.

And yes, of course, Atkins was there, loaded into the ship-mind of the Phoenix Exultant as she approached. In the middle of the otherwise free and peaceful Transcendence, Atkins had introduced a military thought-virus. The vaunted mind-war techniques of the Silent Ones did not detect or stop it.

This simple virus was one that interfered with normal time-binding and information-priority routines in the brain. In effect, it made someone in the Transcendence ignore what was happening outside; no more than an exaggeration of a normal reflex. But it allowed the Phoenix Exultant, huge and hot, to close the distance to the ice cell without being noticed. Xenophon was preoccupied.

The final thought of the Transcendence calmly bade Xenophon and the universe farewell, and ended. Xenophon woke, and saw the gigantic, invulnerable starship almost atop his hiding place.

From one part of the blue sphere that formed his body, Xenophon's neurocircuitry writhed, constructed an emitter, and sent a message to a nearby thought-port. Unlike his normal prolix self, this version of Xenophon sent a brief penultimate message: "You realize now that you have defeated only the weakest and stupidest possible version of the Nothing Philanthropotech, one who has been told nothing about our true goals and true powers. The Lords of the Silent Oecumene have greater agents at their command, and their plans have been very long in the devising. Since even before the Naglfar first reached Cygnus X-l, Ao Ormgorgon vowed his great vow. As for me, you will never know the reasons for my hate."

A second group of complex neurocircuits formed, and created a zone of energy density powerful enough to blind all of the sensitives of the Transcendence nearby; even the ghost array aboard the Phoenix saw no clear image. Long-range analysis would be able to conclude from reconstructions that the metric of timespace in this small area was becoming intensely warped.

Fearing a trap, or unknown weapon, Phaethon held the Phoenix Exultant 300,000 kilometers away until the effect diminished.

By the time Temer Lacedaimon and Vidur and Atkins arrived via remote mannequin some time later, with Phaethon in his armor, to pick slowly through the rubbish, Phaethon's armor circuits discovered the residuum of tidal forces that had distorted subatomic particles in the region.

Apparently, by means unknown, by a science that even the Earthmind did not understand, Xenophon had created a black hole inside himself and collapsed his mass into it.

Atkins, on channel three, commented, "A bizarre form of suicide. Nothing made of matter can survive that"

Phaethon answered, "With all due respect, Marshal. I am not so sure.... The ship-mind says the residuum here is below the threshold useful limit-not even a Sophotech will be able to reconstruct what happened here." Atkins said, "Think he's alive?"

"As to that, I cannot speculate, Marshal. I am only beginning to realize how much none of us know about the universe outside the Golden Oecumene."

Atkins said curtly, "One more reason to head out, I guess."

Phaethon, bright in his gold armor, hovered in the wreckage of that fragile sphere, once so rich with complex photoelectronics, now just black and blasted rubbish, walls torn and distorted by intense gravitic fields, a snow of floating blood-liquids drifting in the micro-gravity, and he wondered what powers the Silent Ones truly commanded.

He was staring at the last message from Xenophon. It was written in dragon-signs of frozen blood and internal fluids from Xenophon's vanished body.

The signs said only: "The Golden Oecumene must be destroyed."