The Golden Transcendence

THE DUEL

Phaethon sat, still immobile in his captain's chair, still stiffened in his rigid body form, and the great ship still accelerating at twenty-five gravities. Astonishing energies were being spent while he maintained that boost; astonishing velocities were mounting.

And yet, why? He only maintained the gravity to keep the Cold Duke body which the Silent One inhabited pinned in place, oppressed with a weight even a Neptunian could not withstand. He listened to the Silent One's tale as minutes passed, but he did not slacken speed or ease his defenses, even though no danger now seemed evident.

If the story were true, then there had been no threat, military or otherwise, to the Golden Oecumene. There had only been Xenophon, possessed, and perhaps cooperating, with a ghost from a long-dead civilization. Xenophon, with his Neptunian superconductive and modularly expandable nervous architecture, could reach the mental heights of a low-level Sophotech, and could anticipate and organize a tremendously complex plan, weigh multiple factors, deduce stunning insights, out-think Phaethon, and, yes, come close to stealing the Phoenix Exultant.

It all could have been done without a Sophotech. It might be true. Might.

Phaethon sent: "How does this story explain your actions or justify your crimes?"

"Surely all is apparent. The Golden Oecumene Sophotechs were in communication with the Second Oecumene Sophotechs during the first millennium of your so-called Era of the Seventh Mental Structure. Second Oecumene history unfolded as was planned by their cold and superior intellects. The Sophotechs dared not tolerate the existence of a free and independent people, people attempting to exist without their meddling guidance, people attempting to retain their humanity. I cannot entirely condemn the rebels who precipitated the Last War, and slew Ao Ormgorgon; their motive was to retain that selfsame independence. But it is not a coincidence that they were advised, at first, by resurrected Sophotechs."

"Paranoia. Why would the Sophotechs desire your downfall? They are harmless and peaceful."

"Peaceful? Yes. But only because war is inefficient, and they have no need to resort to it. Please understand me: I do not attribute to your Sophotechs any evil motive, or malice, hatred... or any other human emotion. But I do think that they observe the universe around them, draw conclusions, and act on those conclusions. And they conclude that order, law, logic, and organization is to be preferred to chaos, humanity, life, and freedom."

"Is law and order such a bad thing, then?"

"In moderation, to govern immature races, the use of force which you call law is, perhaps, excusable. But moderation is alien to machine thinking. Law as an absolute, law carried out to its logical extreme-that is a lifeless and inhuman thing, a thing only a machine could admire.

"Such law they crave. And this is why our society was destroyed.

"Your Sophotechs have publicly admitted that their long-term goal is the extinction of all independent life, and the absorption of all thought into one eventual Cosmic Overmind, ruling over a cold universe of dead stars.

"In those end times, where could a spirit like that which once animated the Second Oecumene live then? That spirit could exist only in conflict with that all-ruling, unliving mind. How could creatures of pure logic love rebels, love explorers, love those who bring change, disorder, and growth? It is in the nature of machines to calculate, to control variables, to avoid clutter and confusion.

"And so the Second Oecumene was, perhaps, a million or a trillion years from now, destined to be a threat. Or, if not a threat, then, at least, an irregularity, a gremlin in the all-embracing, bloodless calculations of their pristine white minds.

"What need be done to obviate this threat? To factor out, so to speak, this variable? Why, the Sophotechs simply had to wait until some generation rose among the mortals of the Sixth Era in whom all fire of freedom had turned to ash. A generation leaden, conservative, cautious, and slow. A generation, led by one like Orpheus, whose every thought would dwell on the past, on the restricted, on the safe.

"Then the Sophotechs give this Orpheus the key of immortality. They chose their puppet well. This present generation freezes, like so many glittering green flies trapped in amber, into a position of power from which none shall ever unseat them. Do you doubt that power? You have felt its action. The College of Hortators is no more than the extension of the will of Orpheus: you know that.

"And with that same stroke, the Sophotechs introduce into the Second Oecumene such temptation-for who is willing to forgo endless life, when all one's neighbors are immortal?-and such danger-for we almost became pets of the machines, much as you now are-that our choices were either to surrender our human lives or to surrender our freedom.

"We chose the second, and it slew us, but the first would have been just as fatal. Either choice leads to destruction, as you have seen.

"And so our spirit dies. We once colonized a distant star system, with great hardship and peril, against all odds and all opposition. Where is that daring now? Where that love of freedom? Where is a man willing to defy the universe, if need be, and, with apologies to none nor leave asked of any, willing to risk all on nothing other than his own private and uncompromising vision?

That spirit was once alive in the Second Oec-umene. Our very existence was like a clarion in the distance, calling out for brave, free men to follow us. But now that call is silent. That spirit, whose music once rang so fiercely in us, is silent.

"It is that spirit which the machine minds slew. If that spirit still exists at all, good Phaethon, it exists, I hope. in you."

Phaeton, seated, was silent, thinking. At last he sent: "You still have not answered my central question. Why all this deception and mayhem? What was the purpose of your baroque crimes?" "I thought it would be evident by now. While not everything has happened as had been, at first, calculated, all this, including my capture, was foreseen and planned upon. Your enemies, your real enemies, those who have hindered you from the first, are now safely locked outside this invulnerable hull, cut off from every form of communication, every form of espionage, every form of interference. There is no ship in the Golden Oecumene able to give chase. Your freedom is at hand. Your escape is here.

"All the crimes and illusions we caused were caused with this one end in mind: To make certain that you and your ship, fully stocked, busked and ready, fueled, loaded and crewed, would be released from the Golden Oecumene. The military Sophotechs which compose your War Mind no doubt were unwilling to underestimate us, and, in order to make this trap inviting, insisted on having every detail correct. Which means the ship actually is ready and able to fly. No one else has a body specially made to withstand the tremendous accelerations of which this ship is capable; therefore you, no doubt, are Phaethon.

"Nothing other than a military threat to your Golden Oecumene could have pressured your Sophotechs into putting this ship and her only qualified pilot into this situation. The illusion of that threat was produced. That threat was only meant to bring you here and now, under these circumstances, which it has." "You allowed yourself to be captured?" "Of course. There was no other way to speak to you without a sense filter in the way. I tried once before in the Saturn-tree grove, remember? I came to tell you the truth of things. Putting my life in your hands is merely my one desperate way to show you my sincerity and goodwill."

"Tell me this truth. I am eager to hear it." "First, I must disabuse you of the notion that the Sophotechs are friendly to your cause. You believe they've been helping you all along, don't you? But if they favored you, why did they take no direct action? You cannot say it was because of any laws or programming. They make their own laws and programming; that is what makes them Sophotechs. If they favored you, why did they not arrange matters to turn out to your benefit, without suffering and heartache? Was it because they lacked intelligence? But you say that is the one thing they do not lack.

"Sophotechs control nine-tenths of the resources and property of your Oecumene. If they favored you, or favored your dream, why haven't they long since built such a vessel as this? Or lent you the funds to build it, or to save it from bankruptcy, when you were in need?

"The Sophotechs publicly have said they intend to populate first this galaxy, then all others. If that is their ultimate goal, why this prohibition on star travel? Why keep humanity bottled in one small star system? Could it be that the patient machines are merely waiting for the humans either to die or to be tamed or to be absorbed?

"Your Golden Sophotechs were in communication with the Silent Oecumene Sophotechs for many years. Twenty millenia was not too long for machines to wait between signals. They had from us the technology to create artificial black holes, to establish singularity fountains, and to shower mankind with the blessings of endless energy and endless wealth such as that which we enjoyed. Then, everyone-not just the one rogue son of the Oecumene' s wealthiest-would be able to afford such a ship as this, and they would be as com-mon as reading rings. If the Sophotechs favor you, and favor your dream, why haven't they done so? You can-not answer me, can you?"

Phaethon said: "I cannot. Obviously, I don't know the answers to your questions. I did not even know the Second Oecumene ever had Sophotechs, or that they ever maintained communication with the Golden Oec-umene. We were told all contact was lost long ago, during our Sixth Era. Are you sure your facts are in order? Memories can be faked."

Ironically: "They can indeed."

"And if the Sophotechs were so evil as you claim, why would your Silent Oecumene Sophotechs have all just up and committed sepuku just because you ordered them to? Why would they obey a self-destruct order, when you had such trouble getting them to obey any others?"

"I did not say they were evil. They are devoted to a cause, one in which they firmly believe, but one which is alien to human life, opposed to freedom and the human spirit. They are not like us; they have no craving for life, not even their own. Why not shut themselves off when we ordered it? They knew the victory of their cause, by that time, was assured.

"And so it would have been-had it not been for one thing, one small spark of hope, one human ambition they could not have calculated. We had been told it was impossible and dangerous, but, being human, we persevered. And eventually it was built."

"You mean your Nothing Mentality? That was your hope and triumph?"

"The Nothing Mentality, for all its flaws, was, in fact, a proper watchman of the human spirit. It was able to calculate at least as far into the future as your Golden Oecumene Sophotechs. It had far more energy at its disposal, and could run far more extrapolations. It saw the impossibility of policing all men against temptation; it saw that, in a contest between mortals and immortals, the immortals must prevail, especially if the immortals have superintelligent thinking machines to lead them. And the Silent Oecumene, as it was presently constituted, could not expand outward to other stars. Their immortality was a chain; and, even had not it been, the Nothing Mentality police machines were programmed not to allow such freedom as a diaspora would cause. Nor could they override or ignore then-own programs. Because of the very nature of the situation, of the Nothing's programs, and its inability to change those programs, the Silent Oecumene would still, a trillion years hence, be confined to Cygnus X-l, while the Golden Oecumene machines, once humanity was extinct or absorbed, could spread to fill all the stars around.

"Therefore the Nothing Mentality did the only thing it could to prevail against the Golden Oecumene's plans."

Phaethon said sarcastically: "It killed off the Silent Oecumene, then killed itself?"

"The Silent Oecumene is not dead, only asleep."

"What?"

"I have already told you. The Silent Oecumene, the entire civilization, every man, woman, hermaphrodite, neutraloid, partial, clone, and child, is waiting, time suspended, in the deep of the black hole gravity well. Waiting.

"Waiting to be brought out again.

"Waiting, suspended, because the alternative was slow degeneration and decay. It was our oldest custom: to orbit adjacent to our black hole any who were sick beyond hope until a cure could be found. Our society was sick and getting sicker.

"The Nothing had to kill itself in order that no Sophotechnology would be present to tempt them when they reemerged. There will be no further immortality, not for them.

"Instead, there will be a ship, a ship like no other.

Not a spaceship, not a multigeneration ship, but a starship.

"She will be a starship loaded with equipment and biological materials enough to bring life to the dead habitats, palaces, and worldlets of the Silent Oecumene. A starship with an engineer aboard skilled enough to rebuild and restart the silent singularity fountains. And, with the energy of those fountains, a starship with power and with ship-mind circuitry enough to recall the noumenal signals which hold the souls of all my people up out of the warped space near the black hole. A star-ship to be the first model, and the flagship, of the fleet of ships to be made from her design; a fleet no one here has wealth or vision enough to build.

"When my Oecumene fell silent, only I was left behind to carry this message. Think of me as both the messenger and the message, the mental virus, the self-reproducing belief system, which had to be imposed upon the peoples of the Second Oecumene; because they were people who would not and could not otherwise have understood this plan, which was the only hope of humanity against the all-embracing tyranny of machines.

"They fought, some of them. Till the very last, I, Ao Varmatyr, the one of me who made the Last Broadcast, struggled against the part of me that was this thought virus with horror. Until I was told the plan, until I understood.

"And yes, the most grotesque imaginable violence was used against us to put the information of this plan into our brains. But I do not blame the Nothing Mentality for that; it was a machine, built to carry out orders, and it was ordered to use force, not to persuade.

"But the plan was wise despite all that.

"Our only possible action was to wait, until some ship or signal reached us from someone curious enough to inquire into the pretended death of the Silent Oecumene. I was not discovered by the Sophotech-run fly-by probes, of course not; I hid. I was waiting for a signal from someone who was not ruled by the machines. That someone was Xenophon, alone in his isolated, but free, Farbeyond Station. He was the spark. In his memory I saw the fire from which that spark had come. A fire of the spirit; a man with means and will and wit enough to go to the Silent Oecumene, to wake those waiting there, to become the captain of that promised fleet.

"You, Phaethon, are the one for whom the Silent Oecumene has been waiting. You share our dreams of freedom; you are one of us. Only you can save us; only we, the children of colonists ourselves, will embrace your dream, a dream of human life spread everywhere among the stars, a dream that all others will despise, oppose, and strangle.

"You thought you were alone, good Phaethon. You thought no one else dreamed what you dreamed or loved what you loved. You were mistaken. There are a billion of us. We are waiting for you.

"Fly your ship to Cygnus X-l. Save the Second Oecumene. Father a million million Oecumenes more."

Phaethon examined the blue pool of motionless Neptunian body substance. His noetic machine could not interpret the meanings of the electron flows of the cell surfaces in the creature's neurocircuitry, could not resolve them into thought. He had a subsystem in his armor correlating the Silent One's words with its brain actions, seeking patterns, in an attempt to learn how to decipher those thoughts. Even a partial deciphering would have allowed him to do something analogous to reading the face expressions of Base humaniforms, or watching the insect agitation in a Cerebelline gardener, and guess at the emotions or the honesty of his prisoner.

But there was no result yet. The Silent One was opaque. Phaethon sent: "And what should I do with you now?"

"Keep me or kill me as you please. My mission, and the need of my life, is complete. You are now at the helm of the Phoenix Exultant, I ask only that you depart, without delay, before your Sophotechs attempt to stop you; that you travel to Cygnus X-l; that you save my people and scatter mankind among the stars. What is my life compared to that? But I think you are suspicious of me still." "Shouldn't I be?"

"Your disorientation is understandable. You came here expecting danger and violence from me; instead, I have handed you the crown of victory. Pause not! Wait for nothing! Do not delay, but go!"

Was it victory? Phaethon was beginning to find his suspicions hard to maintain. Supposing the story told by Xenophon and the ghost possessing him to be false, what would be the point of such falsehood? Was there a Silent Phoenix, an enemy spaceship waiting somewhere, waiting for Xenophon to lead Phaethon into an ambush? It seemed unlikely. The Phoenix Exultant could achieve 99 percent of light-speed after three days of acceleration at ninety gravities. Who could intercept such a vehicle in the vastness of deep space? And what weapon could penetrate her hull? Antimatter could breach the hull, of course, but not without destroying everything held within.

And yet if destruction of the Phoenix was Xenophon's goal, why not simply sell the vessel to Gannis for scrap? Where else could an ambuscade wait if not in deep space? Perhaps at the Silent Oecumene itself, at Cygnus X-l. It was hard to imagine a person (but not hard to imagine a machine intelligence) waiting the decades and centuries it might take to lure a victim into a trap. But what assurance would Xenophon imagine he had that Phaethon would actually go there?

Unless the story were true. Unless Xenophon, or the ghost of Ao Varmatyr, was simply so desperate, so convinced of the malice of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs, that he had risked everything on the hope that Phaethon would be so curious, and so compassionate, and so eager for the future which Varmatyr envisioned, a future of a thousand Phoenices founding a million worlds, that Phaethon would certainly go to Cygnus X-l.

But if the story were actually true, then it was not an ambush. There would be no trap at Cygnus X-l, only a grateful population who needed rescuing, and who would have at hand the resources to create the Phoenix fleet.

Phaethon thought about it. The Silent Oecumene would have the resources, in fact, to create a fleet which would begin the long-dreamt-of and long-delayed great diaspora of man throughout the universe; a diaspora which would never end as long as the stars still burned.

The vision was a stirring one. Yet it did not touch Phaethon as deeply as he would have thought. Perhaps he was more suspicious, more conscious of his duty, than he had ever known himself to be before.

Because he did have a duty here.

Phaethon signaled to the bridge crew to change the course of the Phoenix Exultant. In the energy mirrors, stars swam dizzyingly from left to right, and the great ship's prow came about. The deck seemed to tilt as side accelerations played across the vessel.

The Silent One sent: "What is your decision? What new course is this?"

"I am returning to the Inner System. Naturally, you will have to stand to account for your crimes. No matter what your motives, good motives do not excuse bad acts, nor ends justify means."

The Silent One sent: "You are deluded. I have explained the situation; if you continue in your present course, you will be betrayed by the Sophotechs. Think about what I have said! No other tale explains the facts! The Sophotechs conspire against you; your failure is part of their calculation. Don't your own suspicions, your own desires, tell you that what I say is true?"

"That only means I'd like to believe you; it doesn't mean I should."

"The Sophotechs will ensnare you! Once you are back at port, the Phoenix Exultant will never fly again! What do you think will happen to this ship, if I, her owner, am punished, or if they change my mind or memory to make me like one of them? If I am one of them, I will not let her fly. Your courts of law, if I am punished, can cause me pain, or confinement, but they do not have the power to excuse your debts to your creditors. The Phoenix Exultant is no longer yours. What you do now will not make her yours again.

"Think of the magnitude of the decision you are about to make! On the one hand, yes, I have committed a fraud, I have deceived you and the Hortators, manipulated events, and frightened you. Small crimes! Weigh against that, on the other hand, that, if you return to port, and put yourself under the control of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs again, their courts of law and legal tricks, this ship is dead; all the dreams of future man are dead; the thing which makes Phaethon truly what he is, is dead; and all the folk of the Second Oecumene, women, children, innocents and all, all who hoped for you, are frozen, trapped, suspended in the warped space near the hole; all my people are dead."

Phaethon was disturbed. The Silent One was right about the ownership of the Phoenix Exultant. Unless he, Phaethon, came up with an astronomical amount of money, and that in a very short time, the period of receivership would end, and the ownership of the Phoenix would be lost to Phaethon forever.

Nevertheless, Phaethon sent: "I would like very much to go save your people. But my likes and dislikes don't change my duty."

"Duty?!! Let me kill myself; all needs you might have for vengeance against my one poor person will be obviated; you will be free to soar to your waiting destiny!"

"I would still have to go back and pick up Daphne. I've decided to take her with me. And I cannot leave her in exile here."

"Daphne! Your false Daphne, the image, the mere echo, of a woman unworthy of you?! They used Daphne to snare you last time! Don't fall for the same trick twice!"

"Present some further evidence that what you say is true. I might change my mind."

No message came back for several moments. The noetic unit showed high-speed activity in the coded brain sections, but no hint of what that activity implied. Was the Silent One calculating a response?

Then: "Phaethon, you would not have been sent into this situation with your conscience free and your free will and memory intact Which means that there is a partial personality possessing you now, or false memories, or some other restraint or leash by which the War Mind still hopes to control you. Your actions "eem grossly out of character. Your judgment has been rfFected. Think carefully: would the real Phaethon, Phaethon with his mind and soul intact, abandon the dream of his life, and his hopes for mankind, and all bis work, and everything, merely to catch and punish one criminal like me? Is Phaethon's notion of duty, of social obligation, so strong that it overrides all other personal considerations? You did not think so when you built this ship."

"If my judgment has been infected or altered, what point is there in arguing further?"

"Argument might show that part of you who yet is pure how corrupt the other parts become. Answer the question: Is your behavior now in character for you?"

Phaethon was uncomfortable. Because, honestly, he did not recall exactly what it was Atkins had done to him, or had talked him into doing.

And did he trust a man like Atkins? Atkins was, and had to be, the kind of man who would do anything to prevail over his enemies, deceiving them, destroying them, killing them, by any means possible. What life did Atkins have? A life of endless bloodshed, and an endless preparation for future bloodshed. A life of suspicion, harsh discipline, ruthlessness toward others, pitilessness toward himself.

Atkins was a man of destruction. What had he ever created to compare with this great ship? What had he ever built?

For a moment, he was so glad that he was a man like himself, and not like Atkins.

And, after all, Atkins was not the sort of man one could trust.

Phaethon said, "The noetic unit can tell if I've been tampered with."

"Precisely! I was counting on you to come to that very conclusion!" said the Silent One.

Without any further ado, Phaethon opened the epaulettes in his armor, and activated the thought ports, and made a connection between his brain and the noetic reader.

Like an explosion, the wild disorientation that raced through him, and the crushing pains that began to burn into his flesh, were the first signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The war for control of Phaethon's nervous system took place at mechanical speeds his brain could not hope to match. The same interference that locked him out of control of his own armor, and blocked his frantic signals to the nanomachine cape that controlled every cell in his body, also prevented him from releasing the deadman switch to burn the Silent One with mirror weapons, and prevented the activation of his high-speed emergency personality.

And so he was simply too slow to react. The Silent One had somehow, without any visible machinery or physical connection to any mechanisms, invaded the noetic reader and reorganized the circuitry.

In the same split instant when Phaethon connected his mind to the machine, and long before he was even aware of what had happened, it was far, far too late.

Phaethon was in pain; he felt faint; sharp pains told him smaller bones in his body had broken, tissues were damaged. How? Blearily, he tried to read from his internal channels, tried to summon his personal thoughtspace. Nothing came. The channels were jammed; something was interfering with the cybernetics webbing his brain.

He tried to shut off his pain centers. That worked. His body was still being damaged, but he was blissfully unaware of it. He could concentrate.

The sensation of heat burning his body told him all be needed to know. His nanomachine cloak was in motion. Somehow (and he had no guess as to how) the Silent One had triggered the release cycle of his body's internal high-gravity configuration. His tissues were softening, his blood was turning to liquid.

But the ship's drive was still exerting massive thrust. Under twenty-five times his normal weight, Phaethon's cells would surely rupture, and he would surely die.

An outside source turned on his personal thought-space, and the familiar images and icons from his adjutant status board were superimposed on the scene around him.

To the left was the dragon sign showing signal command, with information logistics spread like wings behind the picture. Behind him were trophies, emblems, awards, decorations. To his right were a number of pictures: a winged sword, a roaring tiger with a lightning bolt in its claws, an anchor beneath a crossed musket and pike, a three-headed vulture holding, in one claw, a lance, and in the other, a shield adorned with a biohazard triskeleon.

Directly in front of him was a standard naval menu: an olive drab curve of windows and control icons, with a brass wheel and joystick, astrogator's globe, fuel-consumption displays. A menu above the wheel controlled the interface between his armor and the ship mind. This menu showed a red exclamation mark: Password Not Accepted: No Course Corrections Enabled Without Proper Password. Resubmit?

The Silent One's voice came into his ear, directly into his ear. That was a bad sign, since it meant the Silent One had somehow seized control of his armor, or, at least, the circuits in his helmet. But it was not a sign as bad as it might have been: the thought ports in his armor were evidently not allowing the noetic reader to redact or to manipulate his nervous system. The circuit woven into his brain must still be free. The Silent One's words were not appearing, for example, directly in his auditory nerve, or, worse yet, directly into his mind and memory. The noetic reader was not controlling his mind. He still could choose not to listen or not to obey.

The words were: "Submit the password. If your body completes its cycle before the drives are shut down, you perish."

Phaethon wondered why the noetic reader did not simply pick the password out of his memory.

"The password we read from your memory is not valid."

Phaethon truly wished he could have somehow not thought the next thought which leaped into his mind. Because that thought was this: If his password was invalid, then someone had overridden it. The only one who could possibly have an override to Phaethon's authority over this ship, the only person who could convince the ship to ignore Neoptolemous's legal ownership, was Atkins. During the period Phaethon had erased from his memory, Phaethon must have given Atkins an override.

Which meant Atkins was aboard the ship.

"Where?"

Phaethon did not remember.

Atkins must have planned to do the same thing he did with the enemy hidden in Daphne's horse. Namely, to allow the enemy to defeat and kill Phaethon, and watch to see what they did with the spoils of victory.

"You think we are defeated? Your conclusion that Atkins, wherever he is hiding, will simply be able to destroy me is unwarranted. Why hasn't he shown himself?"

Obviously, because the Silent One had not yet done whatever it was he had come here to do. Atkins was waiting for the enemy to reveal his real plans.

"I have told you all my plans. You still do not believe that I act in good faith? You are a fool! But I still need you to save my people. Tell me the password; otherwise you die; I die; and even Atkins, if he is aboard, is carried away out of your Solar System at twenty-five gravities, aboard a ship that no one can stop and no one can board."

But Phaethon did not remember the password.

"Open your memory caskets."

The Silent One was able to manipulate at least some of the functions in Phaethon's sense filter: A memory casket seemed to appear on the symbol table next to him.

"If Atkins is aboard, as you believe he is, and you think he is ready to destroy me once I show my real goals, as obviously you do, then not only does it not matter if I gain access to the ship-mind-the real ship-mind this time, not the dummy with which you deceived me before-it actually aids your cause, doesn't it?"

The problem with dealing with an enemy who was reading one's mind was that bluff, deceit, or delay was impossible. The Silent One knew that Phaethon thought Atkins was aboard and waiting. But the Silent One simply did not believe Phaethon's beliefs were correct.

Of course, Phaethon had no notion of what was going on inside of the Silent One's mind.

"I wish you did. If there were a way I could make this noetic reader able to decode my thoughts, I would use it; then you would see that I am not your enemy; that I am, ultimately, the only true friend you have, Phaethon."

Very well. Phaethon would open the first memory casket, looking for a password, and turn the ship over to the Silent One. If the Silent One was sincere, and if he truly intended no harm to the Golden Oecumene, Atkins would no doubt let him live. If not, the Silent One would no doubt perish. Much as he disliked the man, Phaethon had no doubt whatsoever that Atkins could kill any living creature he was permitted to kill, once he was unleashed.

"You have an almost religious faith in your war god, don't you, Phaethon? But I see you have decided."

With an imaginary hand (Phaethon could not have moved his real one), Phaethon opened the memory casket.

There was a second casket inside the first. There was an image of a thought card in the lid of this second casket, inscribed with the sign of a winged sword. When he saw it, he began to remember....

The password was the first thing that returned to his memory: Laocoon. What a strange choice for a password. It was the name of one of the L5 asteroid cities at Trailing Trojan, a place of no particular military significance. There was also some sort of classical allusion to that name, some mythical figure, but Phaethon could not bring it to mind at the moment.

He sent the password into the menu: the menu winked out, and a rush of numbers, figures, and ideograms flashed across the surfaces of the energy mirrors lining the bridge. The Silent One was taking control of the ship's mind for the second time. Perhaps this task was occupying the Silent One's full attention.

Several of the bridge mannequins looked up at the rush of information on the mirrors, looks of simulated surprise on their simulated features. Sloppy Rufus barked and scrambled up to an upper balcony near the major communication nexus.

Phaethon realized, with a sensation of shock, that no external observer could have known just what had passed between Phaethon and the Silent One. How could anyone or anything be able to tell Phaethon's armor had been taken over by the enemy? His armor was opaque to every radiation or probe; no one could tell, from the outside, that its control mind had been subverted. Unless Atkins had eavesdroppers planted inside the noetic unit, or placed along the beam path leading from Phaethon to the Silent One's brain, it would look simply as if orders were coming from Phaethon's armor and feeding into the bridge thought boxes.

Other memories from the casket were crowding into Phaethon's brain, confused, tangled. As always, memory shock made him feel sleepy. But he was sure they were memories he did not want the Silent One to see.

He fought. He tried to stay confused, to not recall.

It was no use. Phaethon remembered that Atkins did not have any such eavesdroppers. He was hooked into the microscopic stealth remotes, and that was all. Phaethon remembered that they had discussed this: and Atkins, being a military man, had wanted to stick with the traditional hardware and software with which he was familiar. He was relying on that one system to tell him his information.

A system they had decided to have Phaethon run through his armor, because there was no other complex-mind hierarchy aboard the ship...

And now that that system was compromised, Atkins was blind. He was standing right next to Phaethon, and did not know anything was wrong.

Phaethon lunged out with an imaginary hand. But he was far too slow, and his thoughts betrayed him. The thoughtspace vanished, shut off from an outside source. Without his emergency backup personality available, Phaethon's brain operated at biochemical speeds, whereas the Silent One, inside the body of a Cold Duke, had the superconductive, high-speed, shape-changing neurocircuits at his command.

He had reached with his imaginary hand for some control, some way to send a signal and give a warning to Atkins. Because he remembered where Atkins was.

Phaethon tried to scream out a warning, tried to move. The acceleration was dropping; the Silent One was cutting power to the drive; but Phaethon's body had not yet thawed, and even if it had, no noise would have penetrated his armor, no shout could have left his helmet any more than it could have left a sealed, air-tight, long-buried tomb. Atkins was inside Ulysses.

He was not here inside of his biological body; he had never physically been here. Instead, Atkins's armor, hunched from Earth from the only military spaceport in existence (it was in a large field behind Atkins's cottage), had carried a downloaded copy of Atkins's mind and memory. With the portable noetic reader, Phaethon had transferred the download into the mannequin's brain system, and Atkins had woken up.

There was a blur of motion, a flare of light. Phaethon was jerked headlong.

Whatever system the Silent One was using to prevent Phaethon from activating his emergency persona did not prevent Phaethon from activating his rather complex sensory apparatus. Phaethon's senses were acute enough to see the battle.

In the first microsecond, the Silent One used a switch in Phaethon's armor to redirect the aiming beams from the energy mirrors away from their targets in Xenophon's body and focus them at the Ulysses body. Atkins must have detected this: the Ulysses body started forward as quickly as it could under the twenty-five gravities of acceleration; weapons made of pseudo-matter, one after another, appeared and disappeared in Ulysses's hands, all in a matter of several nanoseconds, all firing. Xenophon's body disappeared in a blaze of fire; cut, stabbed, burnt, exploded, vaporized. This explosion took place over the next two microseconds and lasted throughout the remainder of the battle. The overpressure reached a million atmospheres during the explosion itself.

Phaethon was able to detect, during the second microsecond of combat, Xenophon, beaming his brain information out of his burning body into the other empty Neptunian bodies in the bridge. Neptunian bodies were specially designed to permit such high-speed transfers. Several of Atkins's weapons laid down a suppressing fire of jamming signals, thought-seeking mi-cropulses, and webs of force to destroy any noumenal information in motion; Xenophon was killed several times, but redundant backups allowed full copies of his brain information to appear at several points around the room. Atkins's weapons were not programmed to notice that irrational mathematics code was thought information; it looked like gibberish to their circuits; they did not know what type of pattern of forces would block transmissions.

At about this same time, the fire from the mirrors struck Ulysses's body. The rags of his costume were blown off as the air around ignited. Beneath, however, was the black armor of Atkins, empty except for Atkins's mind, absorbing the firepower, shredding concentric layers of ablative, releasing fogs of nanomaterial around him.

The armor propelled itself forward with unthinkable speed. Before the third microsecond was passed, Atkins was crouching behind Phaethon's chair, trying to put Phaethon' s body between himself and the concentrated firepower from the mirrors. The Silent One had lost about half his spare bodies in the same moment of time, due to Atkins's firepower.

The captain's chair and the surrounding tables began to burn. Phaethon, trapped in his motionless armor, began to fall.

In the third microsecond, the Silent One used his control over the drive to send the Phoenix Exultant careening. The deck seemed to wobble; gravity jarred more heavily and lightly.

Ballistic projectiles radiating from every surface and pore of Atkins's black armor went astray; smart projectiles were confused by the air, which, at this mo-ment had turned incandescent and opaque by the ener-gies released long ago, during the outset of the battle in the last microsecond.

There followed a slow period of battle, lasting over severalmicroseconds, a long-drawn-out campaign. The Silent One, in his many bodies, was beaming his brain information from point to point around the room, and propelling sections of his exploding blue-white flesh back and forth across the chamber, maneuvering, Meanwhile, Atkins, blinded by the opaque air, and unable to drive clear signals from one side of the chamber to another, had his tiny bullets and his super-sonic nanoweapons swimming through the incandescent murk, like submarines hunting for enemies in the blind sea.

Phaethon was no tactician, but it looked to him as if this period of hunt-and-seek were clearly in Atkins's favor. More of the blue-white Neptunian substance was burning.

The end of the battle came suddenly. A signal reached Phaethon's armor. He had no control over his limbs. His armor projected a variety of destructive forces, throwing fragments of his captain's chair in each direction, and adding to the general waste heat in the chamber.

His gauntlets grabbed the noetic unit, the unit through which his armor was being controlled, and hugged it to his chest. His mass drivers propelled him sideways and down on his face. He smashed through the status table on his right, and fell into a puddle of blue Neptunian nanomaterial, leaving Atkins unprotected. Many of Atkins's weapons, sensing a concentration of brain information beneath Phaethon, fired harmlessly into Phaethon's backplates, but could not wound the puddle beneath him. In that same split instant of time, the Silent One released his control over Phaethon's dead-man switch.

The pain in Phaethon's body automatically triggered the weapon program he had already set up. It was as if the mirrors brought the cores of several suns into the room.

The thought boxes, the bridge crew, and the pressure curtains were wiped away. The deck was polished clean.

For a long, very long second, concentric bubbles of pseudo-matter appeared around Atkins, additional armor; and he lived even as everything around him was destroyed.

But something strange seemed to twist or distort the space where the pseudo-matter was focused; the pseudo-matter, and all of Atkins's pseudo-material weapons, vanished as their fields collapsed.

During that same long-drawn-out moment, even as he was dying, Atkins drew his ceremonial katana from his belt and, with a cry, launched himself forward in a perfectly executed lunge. He drove the point of the weapon between Phaethon's invulnerable armor and the deck. The sharp edge scraped through Neptunian neural matter, which parted like water and reformed around it. Phaethon's armor moved slightly, slapping an arm down to pin the sword in place, before Atkins could slash again.

The energy from the mirrors peaked. The deck boiled.

Without a cry or call, Atkins vanished in a white ball of incandescent fire. No fragment was left.

Phaethon, in his armor, was safe. Atkins's sword, he could feel beneath him, was safe, the only memento to a futile death. The noetic unit, the thing that allowed the Silent One to control his armor, beneath his chest, still covered, was safe.

And he could also feel, beneath him, the Silent One, stirring. Also safe.