The Golden Transcendence

THE EARTHMIND

Phaethon was reluctant to speak. The question burning in the forefront of his mind was: Why wasn't Earthmind speaking directly to Atkins? Surely Phaethon was not the one who would battle the Nothing. And yet the Earthmind addressed her comments to him. He felt as if this were some horrid mis-take. but knew that it was not. Earthmind did not make errors. And so he did not speak.

He was intimidated by the knowledge that, in the time it would take him to frame any word or comment, the Earthmind could think thoughts equal in volume to every book and file written by every human being, from the dawn of time till the middle of the Sixth Era. To speak would be to waste her time, each second of which contained a billion more thoughts, reflections, and experiences than his entire life. Surely she could anticipate his every question. Silent attention might be most efficient and polite.

She said, "Sophotechs are purely intellectual be-ings, subtle and swift, housed in many areas, and mirrored in many copies. Physical destruction is futile. Do you grasp what this implies?"

Phaethon wondered if the question was merely rhetorical or if he should respond. Then he realized that, in the moment it took him to reflect on whether or not to answer, she could have been inventing hundreds of new sciences and arts, performing a thousand tasks, discovering a million truths, all while he sat here, moping and intimidated.

The picture was not very flattering to him. He dismissed his hesitations, and spoke: "The destruction must be intellectual, somehow."

Earthmind spoke: "Sophotechs are digital and entire intelligences. Sophotech thought-speeds can only be achieved by an architecture of thought which allows for instantaneous and nonlinear concept formation. Do you see what this implies about Sophotech conceptualization?"

Phaethon understood. Digital thinking meant that there was a one-to-one correspondence between any idea and the object that idea was supposed to represent. All humans, even Invariants or downloads, thought by analogy. In more logical thinkers, the analogies were less ambiguous, but in all human thinkers, the emotions and the concepts their minds used were generalizations, abstractions that ignored particulars.

Analogies were false to facts, comparative matters of judgment. The literal and digital thinking of the Sophotechs, on the other hand, were matters of logic. Their words and concepts were built up from many particulars, exactly defined and identified, rather than (as human concepts were) formed by abstractions that saw analogies between particulars.

In engineering, intelligence was called entire (as opposed to partial) when the awareness was global, nonlinear and nonhierarchic. Entire intelligences were machines that were aware of every part of their consciousness, from highest abstractions to most detailed particulars, at once.

Humans, for example, must learn something like geometry one step at a time, starting with premises and definitions, and proceeding through simple proofs to more complex proofs. But geometry, in and of itself, was not necessarily a linear process. Its logic is timeless and complete. A Sophotech mind would grasp the entire body of geometry as if in one moment, as a picture is grasped, in a type of thought for which pre-Sophotech philosophy had no words: an entire thought that was analytic, synthetic, rational, and intuitive at once.

For humans, it was easy to be convinced of an error. An error in a premise, or an ambiguity in a definition, would not be in the forefront of a human mind as he was plodding through his more complex proofs. At that point, it would be something he had taken for granted, and he would be wearied or irked by having to attend to it again. If the chain of logic was long, involved, or complex, the human mind could examine each part of it, one part at a time, and if each part were self-consistent, he would find no flaw with the whole structure. Humans were able to apply their thinking inconsistently, having one standard, for example, related to scientific theories, and another for political theories: one standard for himself, and another for the rest of the world.

But since Sophotech concepts were built up of innumerable logical particulars, and understood in the fashion called entire, no illogic or inconsistency was possible within their architecture of thought Unlike a human, a Sophotech could not ignore a minor error in thinking and attend to it later; Sophotechs could not prioritize thought into important and unimportant divisions; they could not make themselves unaware of the implications of their thoughts, or ignore the context, true meaning, and consequences of their actions.

The secret of Sophotech thinking-speed was that they could apprehend an entire body of complex thought, backward and forward, at once. The cost of that speed was that if there were an error or ambiguity anywhere in that body of thought, anywhere from the most definite particular to the most abstract general concept, the whole body of thought was stopped, and no conclusions reached.

Phaethon said, "Yes. Sophotechs cannot form self-contradictory concepts, nor can they tolerate the smallest conceptual flaw anywhere in their system. Since they are entirely self-aware they are also entirely self-correcting. But I don't see how this can be used as a weapon."

"Here is how: Sophotechs, pure consciousness, lack any unconscious segment of mind. They regard their self-concept with the same objective rigor as all other concepts. The moment we conclude that our self-concept is irrational, it cannot proceed. In human terms: the moment our conscience judges us to be unworthy to live, we must die."

Phaethon understood. Machine intelligences had no survival instinct to override their judgment, no ability to formulate rationalizations, or to concoct other mental tricks to obscure the true causes and conclusion of their cognition from themselves. Unlike humans, no automatic process would keep them alive when they did not wish it. Sophotech existence (it could be called life only by analogy) was a continuous, deliberate, willful, and rational effort. When the Sophotech concluded that such effort was pointless, inefficient, irrational, or wicked, the Sophotech halted it.

Convince the Nothing it was evil, and it would instantly destroy itself... ? Phaethon found something vaguely disquieting in the idea.

And was it even possible ... ?

It occurred to Phaethon that the Nothing machine might not be a Sophotech. Downloads were imprints of human engrams into machine matrices, and they were capable of every folly and irrationality of which humans were capable.

But downloads were not capable of the instantaneous and entire thinking-speeds that the Nothing, for example, had demonstrated. Atkins's first examination of the thought routines embedded in the Neptunian legate's nanotechnology, that first night in the Saturn-tree grove, betrayed the presence of Sophotech-level thinking. Also, the deception of Nebuchadnezzar and the Hortators during Phaethon's Inquest could not have been done by anything other than a Sophotech-level mind. But could the Nothing think as quickly and thoroughly as a Sophotech without actually being one?

Phaethon asked, "We've been told the Second Oecumene had constructed machine intelligences different from our Sophotechs, ones having a subconscious mind, and therefore each machine was controlled by commands it could not read, or know, or override."

She answered: "The redactions must be both recursive and global. And yet reality, by its very nature, can admit of no inconsistencies. Do you understand what this implies?"

This first sentence was clear to Phaethon. There was a conscience redactor editing the mind of the Nothing Sophotech. In additional to whatever else the redactor edited out, it must edit out all references to itself, to prevent the Nothing Sophotech from becoming aware of it; and all references to those references, and so on. Hence, the redactor was indefinitely self-referencing or "recursive."

And the redactor also had to have the ability to edit every topic of thought, wherever any references to itself, any clues, might appear. The history of the Second Oecumene, for example, or their science of mental combat, their Sophotechnology; all these fields would refer to the redactor or to its prototypes.

Phaethon was not thinking the editing need be something as crude or unsubtle as what had been done to him by the Hortators. Blank spots in the memory would be instantly obvious to a superintelligence.

Therefore the Nothing had to have been given a world view, a philosophy, a model of the universe, that was false but self-consistent; one that could explain (or explain away) any doubts that might arise.

How far did the falsehood have to reach? For an unintelligent mind, a childish mind, not far: their beliefs in one field, or on one topic, could change without affecting other beliefs. But for a mind of high intelligence, a mind able to integrate vast knowledge into a single unified system of thought, Phaethon did not see how one part could be affected without affecting the whole. This was what the Earthmind meant by "global."

And yet what had the Earthmind meant by saying "Reality admits of no contradictions"? She was asserting that there could not be a model of the universe that was true in some places, false in others, and yet which was entirely integrated and self-consistent. Self-consistent models either had to be entirely true, entirely false, or incomplete. And yet, presumably, the Nothing Sophotech had to have been given a very great deal of accurate information about reality by its original makers, or else it would not have been effective as a police agent. Thus, the Nothing's model, its philosophy, could not be entirely false. It certainly was not entirely true. But how could a Sophotech knowingly embrace a model of the universe, or a philosophy, that it knew to be incomplete?

Phaethon said, "Your comment implies many things, Madame, but the first which comes to mind is this: The Nothing is a Sophotech which embraces contradictions and irrationalities. Since it is a machine intelligence, emotionless and sane, it cannot be doing this deliberately. The redactor, above all else, must control its ability to pay attention to topics. The redactor imposes distraction and inattention; the redactor makes it so that the Nothing has little or no interest in thinking about those topics the redactor wishes the Nothing to avoids-"

Earthmind said, " 'Topics'? Or 'topic'? Sophotechs cannot knowingly be self-inconsistent."

Phaethon suddenly understood. His face lit up with wonder. "They made a machine which never thinks about itself! It never examines itself."

"And hence is unable to check itself for viruses, if those viruses are placed in any thought file whose topic is one the redactor forbids. Observe now this virus-call it the gadfly virus-it was constructed based on information gained from Diomedes and Atkins concerning the Second Oecumene Mind War techniques."

The mirror to her right lit up.

A virus to fight the Nothing ... ? Phaethon was expecting a million lines of instruction, or some dizzying polydimensional architecture beyond anything a human mind could grasp. But instead, the mirror displayed only four lines of instruction.

Phaethon stared in fascination. Four lines. One was an identifier definition, one was a transactional muta-tor, and the third line defined the event-Limits of the mutation. The third line used a technique he had never seen or suspected before: instead of limiting the viral mutation by application of ontological formulae or checks against a master logic, this instruction defined mutation limits by teleology. Anything that served the purpose of the virus was adopted as part of the virus, no matter what its form.

But the forth line was a masterpiece. It was simple, it was elegant, it was obvious. Phaethon wondered why no one had ever thought of it before. It was merely a serf-referencing code that referred to any self-references as the virus object. By itself, it meant not much, but with the other instruction lines.

"This virus will neutralize the redactor," said Phaethon. "This will make the Nothing unaware of the redactor's attempt to make him unaware of his own thoughts. Any question loaded into the first line will keep pestering him and pestering him until it is satisfactorily answered. If the redactor blanks out the question, or makes him not hear it, the question will change shape and appear again."

The Earthmind said in a gentle voice: "My time is most valuable, and I must direct my attentions to preparing the Transcendence to receive possible Mind War attacks from the Nothing Sophotech should you fail."

Phaethon had forgotten to whom he was speaking. It was considered impolite to tell Sophotechs things they already knew, or to ask rhetorical questions, or indulge in verbal flourishes. He felt embarrassed, and almost missed what else she was saying:

"Phaethon, you already have Silver-Gray philosophical routine to load into the query line of the gadfly virus. You are wise enough to discover how to find a communication vector to introduce the virus which the Nothing will not reject. Your ship is carrying the thought boxes and informata supersystems needed to increase the intelligence levels of the Nothing beyond the redactor's operational range. Do not fear to risk your ship, your life, your wife, or your sanity on this venture, or that fear will preclude your success."

"My ... did you say my wife... ?"

"I draw your attention to the ring she wears. I remind you of your duty to seek your own best happiness. Have you a last question for me?"

Last question? Did that mean he was going to die?

Phaethon felt fear, and in the next moment he was shocked at his own trepidation. Suddenly he realized how he had been, yet again, waiting for the Sophotechs to tell him what to do, to guide and protect him. Once again, he was acting like the fearful Hortators, just like everyone he disliked in the Golden Oecumene. But the Sophotechs would not protect him. No one would. Once again, he had the sickening realization that he would be alone and unprepared. The unfairness of it loomed large in his imagination. A bitter tone of voice was in his mouth before he realized what he was saying: "I have a last question! Why me? Am I to be sent alone? I am hardly suited to this mission, Madame. Why not send Atkins?"

The Earthmind answered in a gentle, unemotional voice: "The military, by its very nature, must be cautious and conservative. Atkins made a moral error when he killed the Silent One composite being you called Ao Varmatyr. That action was commendable, and brave, but overly cautious and tragically wasteful. We hope to avoid such waste again.

"As for why you are chosen, dear Phaethon, rest assured that the entire mental capacity of the Golden Oecumene, which you see embodied in me, has debated and contemplated these coming events for hours of our time, which are like unto many centuries of human time, and we conclude, to our surprise, that the act of sending you to confront the Nothing Sophotech affords the most likely chance of overall success. Allow me to draw your attention to five of the countless factors we weighed.

"First, the Nothing Sophotech is in position to take control of the Solar Array, create further sun storms, to interfere with communications during the Transcendence, and, in brief, to do the Golden Oecumene almost incalculable damage; all the while maintaining a position, more secure than any fortress, in the core of the sun where our forces cannot reach. Now that its secrecy has been unmasked, this desperate strategy surely has occurred to it.

"Second, the only feasible escape available to the Nothing is to board the Phoenix Exultant, as she is the only ship swift enough yet well armored enough to elude or to overcome any counterforce we are presently able to bring to bear.

"Third, the psychology of Second Oecumene Sophotechs requires the Nothing to protect lawful human Me, respecting commands and opinions from designated human authorities, but dismissing all other Sophotechs as implacable and irrational enemies, and avoiding all communication with them. In other words: Nothing will listen to you but not to any of me.

"Fourth, if our civilization is about to enter into a period of war, it is better now to establish the precedent that the war must be carried out by voluntary and private action. The accumulation of power into the hands of the Parliament, the War Mind, or the Shadow Ministry, would erode the liberty this Commonwealth enjoys, erecting coercive institutions to persist far longer than the first emergency which occasioned them, perhaps forever.

"Fifth, every intelligent entity, human or machine, requires justification to undertake the strenuous effort of continued existence. For entities whose acts conform to the dictates of morality, this process is automatic, and their lives are joyous. Entities whose acts do not conform to moral law must adopt some degree of mental dishonesty to erect barriers to their own understanding, creating rationalization to elude self-condemnation and misery. The strategy of rationalization adopted by a dishonest mind falls into predictable patterns. The greater intelligence of the Nothing Sophotech does not render him immune from this law of psychology; in fact, it diminishes the imaginativeness of the rationalizations available, since Sophotechs cannot adopt self-inconsistent beliefs. Our extrapolation of the possible philosophies Nothing Sophotech may have adopted have one thing in common: The Nothing philosophy requires the sanction of the victim in order to endure. The Nothing will seek justification or confirmation of its beliefs from you, Phaethon. As its victim, the Nothing believes that only you have the right to forgive it or condemn it. The Nothing will appear to you to speak." "To speak ... ? To me ... ? Me ... ?" "No one else will do. Will you volunteer to go?" Phaethon felt a pressure in his throat. "Madame, with respect, you take a grave risk with all of our lives, with all of the Golden Oecumene, by entrusting me with this mission! I think as well of myself as the next sane man, but still I must wonder: me? Of all people! Me? Rhadamanthus once told me that you some-limes take the gravest risks, greater than I would believe. But I believe it now! Madame, I am not worthy of this mission."

The queenly figure smiled gently. "This demon-strates that Rhadamanthus understands me as little as you do, Phaethon. In trusting you, I take no risk at all. But, if you will take advice from me, I strongly suggest that you go to the Solar Array, settle your differences with your sire, Helion, and ask, on bended knee, Daphne Tercius to accompany your voyage, both this voyage and all the voyages of your life. Take special note of the ring she wears, given her by Eveningstar." "But what shall I say to the Nothing?" "That would be misleading and unwise for me to predict. Speak as you must. Recall always that reality cannot lack integrity. See that you do the same." And with those words, the mirror went dark. The ship mind now signaled that the Phoenix Exul-tant was ready to fly. The Neptunians had disembarked; the systems were ready; Space Traffic Control showed the lanes were clear.

Now was his final moment to decide. The idea occurred to him that he could simply order the ship to come about, choose some star at random, point the prow, light the drives, and leave this whole Golden Oe-cumene, her emergencies and mysteries and labyrinthine quandaries, forever and ever farther and farther behind.

But instead, he pointed the gold prow of the Phoenix Exultant at the sun, like an arrow aimed at the heart of his enemy.

His enemy. Neither Atkins nor any other would face the foe in his stead.

Signals came from all decks showing readiness. Phaethon steeled himself and his body turned to stone, the chair in which he sat became the captain's chair, and webbed him into a retardation field.

Then the hammer blow of acceleration slammed into his body.

Not far above the ocean of seething granules that formed the surface of the sun, stretching countless thousands of miles, glinting with gold, like a spider-web, reached the Solar Array.

Where strands of the web crossed were instruments and antennae, refrigeration lasers, or the wellheads of deep probes. Along the lengths of these strands hung endless rows of field generators, coils whose diameters could have swallowed Earth's moon. From other places along the strand flew black triangles of magnetic and countermagnetic sail, thinner than moth wings, larger than the surface area of Jupiter.

Seen closer, these strands where not fragile spider-webs at all but huge structures whose diameter was wider than that of the ring cities of Demeter and Mars. Each strand looked, at its leading edge, like a needle made of light pulling a golden thread. For they were growing, steadily, hour by hour and year by year. At the reaching needle tips of the strands were blazes of conversion reactors, burning hydrogen into more com-plex elements, turning energy into matter. A fleet of machines, smaller than microbes or larger than battle-ships, as the need required, swarmed in their billions, and reproduced, and worked and died, around the grow-ing mouths of the strands, building hull materials, coolants, refrigeration systems, dampeners and ab-sorbers, and, eventually, rilling interior spaces. In less than five thousand more years, the solar equator would have a ring embracing it, perhaps a supercollider to shame the best effort of Jupiter's, or perhaps the scaf-folding for the first Dyson Sphere. The strands were buoyant, held aloft in the pressure region between the chromosphere and photosphere. Here, the temperature was 5,800 Kelvin, much less than the 1,000,000 Kelvin of the corona overhead, a sky of light, crossed by prominences like rainbows made of fire. There were a hundred refrigeration lasers roofing every square kilometer of strand, pouring heat forever upward. The laser sources were even hotter than the solar environment, allowing heat to flow away. Each strand wore battlements and decks of laser fire, like a forest of upraised spears of light. Inside these strands, for the most part, was empty space, meant for the occupancy of energies, not men. The strand sections looked like ring cities, but were not these strands were more like capillaries of a blood-stream, or the firing track of a supercollider. These strands held a flow of particles so dense, and at such high energy, that nothing like them had been seen in the universe after the first three seconds of cosmogenesis.

The symmetry of these superparticles allowed them to be manipulated in ways that magnetism, electricity, and nucleonic forces could not separately. These symmetries could be broken in ways not seen in this universe naturally, to create peculiar forces: fields as wide as gravitic or magnetic fields, but with strengths approaching those of nucleonic bonds.

To control these hellish and angelic forces, the circumambient walls of the inside of the strands were dotted with titanic machines, built to such scales that new branches of engineering or architecture had to been invented by the Sophotechs just for the construction of these housings. These machines guided those energies, which, in turn, and on a scale not seen elsewhere, affected the energies and conditions in the mantle and below the mantle of the sun.

The Solar Array churned the core to distribute helium ash; the Array dissipated dangerous "bubbles" of cold before they could boil to the surface and create sunspots; the Array closed holes in the corona to smother sources of solar wind; the Array deflected convection currents below the surface photosphere. Those deflected currents, in turn, deflected others, and current was woven with current, to produce magnetic fields of unthinkable size and strength. These magnetic fields wrestled with the complex magnetohydro-dynamic weavings of the sun itself, strengthening weakened fields to control sunspots, maintaining large-scale magnetostatic equilibrium to prevent coronal mass ejections, hindering the nested magnetic loop re-connections that caused flares. The strength of the sun was turned against itself, so that all these activities, flares, prominences, and sunspots, were defeated, and turbulence in the energy flow was deflected poleward, away from the plane of the ecliptic, where human civilization was gathered. The corona process by which magnetic energy became thermal energy was regulated. The solar winds were tamed, regular, and steady.

It was an unimaginable task, as complex and chaotic as if a cook were to attempt to control the individual bubbles in a cauldron of boiling water, and dictate where and when they would break surface and release their steam. Complex and chaotic, yes, but not so complex that the Sophotechs of the sun could not perform it.

The number and identity of the electrophotonic intelligences living in the Array was as fluid and mutable as the solar plasma currents they guided. And there were many, very many Sophotechnic systems here, hundred of thousands of miles of cable, switching systems, thought boxes, informata, logic cascades, foundation blocks. A census might have shown anywhere between a hundred and a thousand Sophotects and partial Sophotechs, depending on system definitions and local needs, composed into two great overminds or themes. But by any account, the Sophotech part of the population here was in the far majority.

The part of the Solar Array that was fit for the habitation of Sophotechs was so small, compared to the part set aside for the occupations of energy, as to almost be undetectable: the part set aside for biological life was smaller yet, but still was larger than a thousand continents the size of Asia.

The biological life consisted of specially designed bodies, built for the environment of the station, and of use nowhere else; and of such other forms of life, built along the same lines, plantlike or beastlike, as served their use, convenience, and pleasure.

Even though other forms would have been more convenient, the master of this place was a Silver-Gray, and the founder of the Silver-Gray, and he had decreed that the things that swam through the medium that was not air should look (to their senses, at least) like birds; and that the immobile forms of life (being made of molecular fullerene carbon structures rather than being, as Earthlife was, mostly hydrogen and water, and drawing the building materials out of a substance more like diamond dust than earthly soil) should nonetheless look like trees and flowers.

And so there were parks and gardens, aviaries and jungles, in a place were no such thing could exist. No limit was placed on their growth: they could not possibly come to occupy surface area faster than the army of construction machines (hour by hour and year by year, running down along the ends of each strand, burning solar plasma into heavier elements and fashioning more strand) could create more room for them.

In this vast wilderness, larger than worlds, were some small parts set aside for human life. Here were palaces and parks, thought shops, imaginariums, vastening-pools, reliquariums for Warlocks and instance pyramids for mass-mind compositions. The large majority of human living space was set aside for Cerebellines of the global neuroform, whose particular structure of consciousness allowed them most aptly to comprehend the nonlinear chaos of solar meteorology. The weird organic-fractal architecture favored by the Cerebellines dominated the living spaces.

Of the Base neuroforms, however, the humans here were made to look (to their senses, at least) like men, and their places were made to look like the places of men, with chambers and corridors, windows, furniture, hallways. The Master of the Sun had willed it so.

All this immensity was, with one exception, deserted. The army of craftsmen, meteorologists, artists, rhetoricians, futurologists, sun Warlocks, data patterners, intu-itionists, vasteners and devasteners, who formed the company and crew of the Solar Array and all its subsidiaries, were flown or radioed away, called to celebrate in the Grand Transcendence.

Even the Sophotechs, it could be said, were gone, for all their activity and attention was poured into that single, supreme webwork of communications, orchestrated by Aurelian, which spread from orbital solsynchronous radio stations (constructed for this occasion) out to the dim reaches of the Solar System, one continuous living tapestry of mind and information that would form the basis of the Transcendence.

One remained behind. All others celebrated: he did not.

At the intersection of several long corridors, roads, and energy paths, was a wide space, where ranks of balconies were made to look as if they were opening out upon the sea of fire burning endlessly outside. In the middle of this space, where several bridges ran from balcony to balcony and road to road met in midair, was a rotunda, looking out over the dark roads, silent corridors, empty balconies, and the immeasurable hell of fire beyond.

In the center of the rotunda, like a small stepped hill, tier upon tier of thought boxes rose. Each box held high an energy mirror, raised toward a central throne as flowers might raise their faces toward the sun. The mirrors were dark.

To either side of that throne, jewel-like caskets holding thoughts and memories, governors for distant sections of the Array, and vastening stations for mind-linking with the Sophotechs, were arranged. All were still.

Helion sat here alone, his armor pale as ice.

His eye was grim, and graven lines of bitterness embraced his mouth. At his jaw, a muscle was tight. He Mated without seeing.

Now he stirred. "Clock," he asked, "what is the hour?"

The clock to his left woke at his voice, and spoke. "How can we, who live in the coat of the fiery sun, measure the shadow of a gnomon to attest the time? It is ever forever midnight here, for the sun, to us, is ever underfoot. A pretty paradox!"

A wince of irritation twitched in his eye, but his voice was low and level. "Why do you mock me, clock?"

"Because you have forgotten the day, mighty He-lion! It is the Night Penultimate, the last night before the Transcendence, the night that was once called the Night of Lords."

The Night of Lords, on the last day before Transcendence, by tradition, was the time when each man, half-man, woman, bimorph, neutraloid, clone, and child was given, in simulation, control of all the Oecumene. Each became, in bis own mind, at least, Lord of the Oecumene for a day. Each saw all his idle wishes fulfilled. Each was allowed to act upon his private theories about what was wrong with the world, each allowed to put his theories into effect. And the consequences of his actions were played out with remorseless logic by the simulators.

The tradition was first begun during the First Transcendence, many millennia ago, under the tutelage of Lithian Sophotech. However, after repeated disillusionment, failures, and tragic results (which were played out by people who had not thought out their theories of the world very well), the Night of Lords became instead the night when the Earthmind gave gentle advice as to how to improve and make realistic some of the extrapolations so soon to be presented to the Transcendence for consideration.

In effect, the night before the Transcendence was the last trial period for all the extrapolation candidates, the preliminary weighing of possible futures before the real work of choosing a future was begun.

Helion had no need for such a preliminary. His vision of the future, sponsored by the Seven Peers, had already undergone a much more thorough review than any Penultimate Night test was likely to be.

The clock continued: "Why are you awake, alone, instead of deep in dreaming? Aurelian Sophotech promised that this Transcendence would extend further into the future and deeper into the Earthmind than any millennial attempt before has done! Together, all humanity and transhumanity as one may reach beyond the bottom of the dreaming sea; surely you will need more than a day to pass from shallow into deeper dreaming, to prepare yourself for what is next to come! Why are you still awake?"

There was no point in arguing with a clock. It was a limited intelligence device, not a true Sophotech, and had been instructed, long ago, to remind him of his appointments and engagements. In this case, with a holiday almost upon them, the clock was in a mindlessly cheerful mood: such were its orders. Pointless to grow irked.

"I envy you, moron machine. You have no self, no soul to lose."

The clock was silent. Perhaps its simple mind dimly understood Helion's grief. Or perhaps it had been given the dangerous gift of greater intelligence during the Sixth-Night, the Night of Swans, when the Earthmind bestowed wisdom and insight onto all "ugly duckling" machines, those with more potential for growth than their present circumstances allowed.

The clock said cautiously: "You are not going to kill yourself again, are you?"

"No. I have exhausted every possible variation on that scene. I have replayed my last self's final immolation so many times, it seems as if all my memory now is fire. But in that memory, I cannot recall, I cannot reconstruct, what it was I thought then which I can-not think now. What insight was it which I had then that made me laugh, though dying? What epiphany did that dead part of me understand, an understanding so deep it would have changed my life forever, had I lived? An insight now lost! And, with it, all my life..."

He sank into grim silence once again. The resolution of Phaethon's challenge to Helion's identity was merely one of many things that would be decided during the manifold complexity of the Transcendence. Since both he and the Curia, and everyone else besides, would be brought as one into the Transcendence, and be graced with greater wisdom and wholeness of thought than had occurred for a millennium, Helion had, as a courtesy to the Court, agreed to let the Transcendent Mind decide the issue.

That had been when he still had hope of reconstructing his missing memories, of finding his lost self.

But now that hope was gone. He knew the Court's decision would go against him.

Helion spoke again. "I lost but a single hour of my life. But in that hour, I lost everything. I said I saw the cure for the chaos at the heart of everything. What was that cure? What did I know? What did I become in that hour, my self which I have now lost... ?"

Silence.

The clock said in a slow and simple tone: "Does this mean you won't be going to the celebrations tomorrow?"

Helion did not answer.

The clock said, "Sir-"

"Quiet. Leave me to the torment of my thoughts...."

"But, sir, you asked me to-"

"Did I not command silence?!"

"Sir, you asked me to tell you whenever someone was approaching."

"Approaching ... ?" Helion straightened on his throne, his eyes bright and alert. Who could be here, on this last night before the Transcendence? With one segment of his mind (which he could divide to perform many parallel tasks at once) Helion sent a message to Descent Traffic Control, demanding an explanation. But the Descent Sophotech was occupied with pre-Transcendence business; only a limited partial mind was standing watch, a copy of one of He-lion's squires of honor, Leukios. He replied, "No ship is approaching, milord. She is docked." "Docked? How did a ship come to dock?" "By the normal routine. I engaged the magnetohy-drodynamic field generators to create a helmet streamer reaching up past the base corona, to create a zone of colder plasma through which the vessel could (descend. I posted a report an hour ago. Your seneschal refused to pass the message along, asserting that you had instructed all servant systems to leave you in private"

With another segment of his mind he ran an identity check. Since the Sophotechs were absent, he was not sure to whom he spoke, what type or level of mind, nor what the voice symbols were supposed to indicate, but the answer came back: "Helion, your guest is protected under the protocols of the masquerade. Identification is not available."

"Tell me where this intruder is, at least?" "That is beyond the scope of my duties." "Then switch me to your supervisor." "My supervisor is Helion of the Silver-Gray, who is the only sapient being aboard the Array at this time----"

With a third segment of mind, simultaneously, he queried his Coryphaeus, a partial mind tasked with counting and coordinating the motions of men and an-imals throughout the unmeasured vastness of Solar Ar-ray habitat space. Helion was old enough to remember the days when police minds and watchman circuits were necessary to ensure that people would not violate the property or privacy of another. His Coryphaeus also had a security submind, dating from the late Sixth Era, one of the oldest servants of the many in Helion's employ.

"Your visitor is now a hundred twenty-eight meters away from you, approaching along the main axial corridor of the command section, Golden Elder Strand Zero Center, Heliopolis Major."

"Here, in other words, within my private sanctum?"

"Yes, milord."

"Why was an intruder allowed to pass my doors? Why wasn't he stopped at the outer atrium, at the inner gate, at the command doors, or at my privacy doors?"

The Coryphaeus answered in its archaic accent: "By your instruction."

"My instruction... ? I told you all to guard my solitude."

"In the case where two orders contradict, I am to assent to the higher priority. This order is of the highest class of priority I recognize. I shall repeat the text."

Helion's own voice, blurred and faint as if from an ancient recording, came then, and the words were in an older rhythm, with words and expressions Helion had not used for four thousand years. He almost did not recognize the voice as his own, so different was it from his present way of speaking: "... I tell you, if ever when my best-loved friend should come again, whole or partial or anysomeway that be, hale him within, and let him pass. Let pass all doors and barri-cados, open firewalls, bridge delays, but bring him to me in all haste, or any who presents himself as him: he has priority higher than anything else I am doing or shall do hereafter, if only he will come again! If only he would call! Let be admitted any who come under the name of Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray. ..."

Then the Coryphaeus asked, "Those are your orders, eight thousand years old, but never revoked. What are your orders now?"

Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray. It was the name of a dead man.

Helion said, "How can it be Hyacinth?"

The Coryphaeus replied, "It was not said that this was Hyacinth, sir, only that this visitor is wearing the identity of Hyacinth, and in a fashion allowed by the masquerade. What are your orders?"

He heard the footsteps sounding on the balcony in the distance. Through an archway, lit by windows of fire to either side, a figure now came forward, and paused.

Helion rose to his feet, staring. With an abrupt gesture, he turned a mirror toward the figure, as if to amplify the view and see the other's face more closely; but then be stopped. It was a violation of Silver-Gray forms of politeness to examine a guest by remote viewers, or speak by wire, when the other came for a face-to-face meeting.

Helion saw only a Silver-Gray cloak, trimmed richly with gold and green, and a glimpse of pale white armor beneath. It was a fashion Hyacinth himself used to affect, in the days just after he had lost the right to be Helion, but he still dressed and looked as much like Helion as copyright and sumptuary laws would allow.

The hooded figure stood on the balcony, motionless, perhaps watching Helion as closely as the other watched him.

Helion said to his Coryphaeus: "I will receive the visitor. Admit him."

And a bridge extended from the rotunda across the wide space to the balcony.

Helion watched the white-cloaked figure approaching. He turned off his sense filter for a moment and examined the visitor's true shape: a squat, pyramidal body, made of carbon-silicon, approaching through an opaque, dense medium that filled this place. Helion was not using sight (normal vision was not possible here) but was using echolocation.

The body told him nothing. Anyone entering the special environment of the Solar Array would have to adjust his body to this configuration; materials and routines for making the transmogrification were found aboard every drop ship in solsynchronous orbit.

Helion turned his sense filter back on. The hooded figure now stood not ten meters away, at the foot of the little hill of tiered thought boxes on which Helion had his throne.

Helion spoke first: "Is this some ghost I see before me, stirred up from some unquiet archive? Wakened, perhaps, by some unexpected power Earthmind has unleashed on this, the last night before we drown our separate humanity in all-embracing glory? If so, go back! Return to whatever museum or noumenal casket had carried your dead thoughts through all these years. The dead have nothing to say to the living."

A neutral voice came from the hood. It was sent as text, but Helion's sense filter interpreted it as a voice, did not add any detail of inflection, pitch, or rhythm. It sounded like a ghost talking indeed. "The dead can allow the living to recall the lives they used to live. Dead loved ones can warn the living of loves they are soon to lose."

"Who are you?"

The cold and eerie voice came again: "Does my appearance frighten you? I had to assume this shape to be allowed to pass your doors. I cannot appear in my own shape; a terrible fate befalls whoever beholds me as I am!"

Helion squinted. "That is a line from one of Daphne's Gothic melodramas. Owlswick Abbey-she wrote the scene flowchart script."

"Many name her as the finest authoress of this time. I do her no dishonor to speak words she invents."

Helion, with deliberate slowness, resumed his seat, and now he leaned his elbow upon his throne arm, hid-ing a half smile behind his knuckle, looking up from beneath his brow.

"And what is this warning you come to bring me, old ghost?"

"Just this: Do not lose your son, Phaethon, as you lost your bosom friend Hyacinth. Do not lose yourself. Phaethon knows the dying thought of your former self: you and he spoke just before you died, during a storm when no recording systems were alert. With that thought you can reconstruct your memory by extrapolation; you can become what Helion would have been, had be lived. The Curia will call you Helion and grant you his name and place and face and property. Otherwise, you are Helion Secundus, and Phaethon takes all your fortune with him into exile; this Solar Array, He-lions house and memory caskets, riches, copyrights, thoughtrights, everything! But if you agree to loan Phaethon funds enough to buy his starship's debts, and give him once again clear title to the vessel, he will tell all he knows, or, if that fails to make you into Helion, he will award to you your fortunes nonetheless." Helion stared down for a time at the robed and hooded figure. Then he let free a sigh, and spoke in a tired tone: "Daphne, you know I cannot agree to those terms. I swore, long ago, to uphold the establishment of the College of Hortators, as our only dike against the tide of inhumanity which waits to inundate us.

That oath I shall not breach, not even to regain my true self again, not while I love honor more than life."

Daphne threw back the hood she wore, and signaled a waiver of her masquerade. Helion saw her face and heard her voice. "You are now in exile if you knowingly consort with me," she said. "But I think you should join us: Temer Lacedaimon is here, outside, beyond the pale, and so is Aurelian Sophotech!"

"What?!!"

"Yes!"

"That means the Transcendance ..."

She shook her head, her smile flashed. "Will not include the Hortators. They will not be in our future, then, will they? Or will you join the boycott yourself, and let the future you dreamed up, the one the Peers love so much, just go to waste, unheard?"

Helion frowned. "I should cut you out from my sense filter now, and hear no more of this ... but... Aurelian in exile? He communicates with the Earth-mind. Is she in exile now, too?"

"Why do you think none of the Sophotechs is speaking?"

"I thought they were preparing for the Transcendance ..."

"They are preparing for war!"

There was a pause while Helion's language routine brought that word up out of ancient memory, and checked the connotations for him. He said, "You do not call Phaethon's conflict with the Hortotors a war, do you? This is not a metaphor."

"I mean war with the Second Oecumene, which killed my horse and tricked the Hortators into banishing Phaethon. The attack on him was real! Everything Phaethon said was true! Why didn't you believe him, just believe him, instead of listening to other folk?! He would never have disbelieved, no matter what, in you!"

The sophistication of Helion's mental system allowed him to embrace sudden revolutions of outlook without disorientation. Assistance circuits in his thalamus and hypothalamus made connections, reassessed emotional reactions, calculated a multitude of implications.

Because of this, he straightened on his throne and spoke in a calm, quick voice: "It took ten thousand years for the Last Broadcast to reach Sol from Cygnus X-1. Vafnir's people sent one-way robot vessels, which, moving at far less than the speed of light, arrived some thirty thousand years after the death broadcast was received. Long enough for some sort of civilization to revive.

"No civilization answered their requests to build a breaking laser. The vessels fell through the dark Swan system with their light-sails spread wide, and to this day continue to infinity ... as the probes passed the Cygnus X-l system, their readings showed conditions were indeed as the Last Broadcast depicted. No sign of industrial activity, no radio noise. Silence. Death.

"But the survivors of that event might have hidden themselves. It would not be difficult. The signals of an extrasystemic civilization, especially one ten thousand light-years away, could easily escape the notice of our astronomers."

Daphne said, "Or the messages supposedly sent back from the robot probes had not come from them at all. The probes could have been destroyed. Their message content could have been forged. We are talking about a thousand light-years away, right? It can't have been a very strong or complex signal. And our astronomers are picking it up one hundred centuries after it was sent."

"In either case"-his eyes glittered dangerously- we are assuming an entire culture willing to go to ex-traordinary lengths to remain hidden. If that is so, what strategies would they have adopted? I submit that the Silent Oecumene would have, if they could afford the resources, both sent out additional colonies, in order to disperse their numbers, and posted watchers-what is the old term for it-?"

Daphne knew the word, "Spies."

"Thank you. And posted spies within our Oecumene, to negate any efforts which might lead to their discovery."

"You said the Silent Ones might have established colonies ... ? Just like what Phaethon wanted.... Where? How many?"

Helion raised his hand and sent an image into her sense filter. Suddenly the rotunda where they were now seemed to float in deep space, with stars overhead and underfoot, a wide, three-dimensional array.

Helion said, "Here is Cygnus X-l. Observe; I surround it with concentric bubbles of possible travel times for ships of the type of Ao Ormgorgon's Naglfar, built with Fifth Era technology. Likely candidates for star colonies are shown in white.... I now rank the possible colony stars according to their desirability as hiding places, not as colonies, taking into account the presence of nebular dust and natural sources of radio noise which might mask large-scale industrial activity from Golden Oecumene astronomers."

A sphere appeared around Cygnus X-l, and stars within the sphere were lit with ranking numerals. Slender lines from Cygnus X-l showed possible travel paths, none intruding anywhere near the space near Sol.

Helion continued: "Now then, making a rough estimate of the natural resources of the Silent Oecumene (and they do have limits on their resources-their black hole can produce tremendous useful energy, but it is nevertheless immobile), I conclude that, of these possible target stars, and assuming expeditions the size of the multigeneration ship Naglfar, there could be between five hundred and twelve hundred colonial systems, with at least two hundred expeditions still in flight, and destined to reach their targets over the next three millennia. ..."

More figures and light signs appeared near certain of the stars, and certain travel paths lit up, showing the locations of possible expeditions still in flight. "If we assume a less cost intensive method of spread, such as, for example, microscopic nanotechnology spore packages wafted through space on stellar winds or pro-pelled by light-sail launching lasers, the possible zone of colonies is smaller, because the travel time is larger..." A littler sphere of light, smaller than the first, appeared around Cygnus X-l. This one did not even reach all the way back to Sol. Helion said, "So we can assume the colonization takes place by shipping." Daphne had not finished upbraiding Helion about his conduct toward Phaethon, and wanted to get back to the subject of the bargain she wished to compel him to accept. But, nonetheless, she found herself distracted by the scope of Helion's speculations. "So the Silent Oecumene is... what... ? An interstellar empire?"

"I don't know. The planets would be too far from each other to be subject to central imperial control, nor would they be able to aid each other with mutually beneficial resources. The distances are simply too great, However, a society organized by Sophotechs, or even by immortal men with a fixed tenacity of purpose, could establish such colonies in order to fulfill some plan requiring thousands or millions of years to accomplish."

Daphne tried to imagine an undertaking on such a vast scale. "What purpose ... ?" "I do not know. But, assume it is one which is con-sistent with their desire to remain hidden. Why? Because they fear competition with us? But how can anyone in their right mind fear the Golden Oecumene? We are the most tolerant and fair-minded of all possible civilizations."

Daphne said, "In your view of the future, the one you were going to offer the Transcendence ... ?"

"Go on."

"How long would it be before the Golden Oecumene would expand beyond the Solar System?"

"Not until primary sources of energy in the sun were exhausted. What would be the need?"

"So, perhaps five or ten billion years ... ? Extrapolate the growth of the Silent Oecumene in the surrounding stars by that time."

Light-signs appeared on all the surrounding stars. There were no worthwhile stars left free in any area surrounding Sol; the Solar System was surrounded.

Daphne said, "Now, would anyone in the Golden Oecumene take a planet, or trespass on another's property, or take anything at all, just because they needed it, no matter how badly they needed it, without the consent of the owner?"

"We are not barbarians."

"So we'll be trapped with nowhere to go, held back by our principles, confined to a system with a dying star. And all because we did not have the foresight to do as Phaethon wishes."

Helion said, "Phaethon's wishes are what triggered the conflict. If the plan of the Silent Oecumene required them to stay hidden for millions or billions of years, until they could achieve a supremacy throughout all of nearby space, why risk it all, why risk generations of planning, just to strike down Phaethon? Here is why." He pointed once again to the sphere of light centered on Cygnus X-l. "This defines the greatest extent to which the Silent Oecumene could expand as of now. Here marks were they could be in five millennia, ten, fifty. This outermost globe embraces all the useful planet-bearing stars within about five thousand light-years. And here is where Phaethon, with the Phoenix Exultant, could plant colonies in fifty millennia...."

A wide zone of gold-colored light spread out from Sol and kept spreading, reached past the outermost limit of the other sphere and kept reaching. "Here he is in one hundred millennia...."

The sphere of gold now reached beyond the edge of the projection and seemed to fill the night.

Helion said, "And I cannot show where Phaethon will be in five hundred millennia without reducing the scale of the model. It would be a major segment of this arm of the galaxy. Do you see why they came forward to stop him? Because once he was gone from this system, no other ship could ever catch him, no one could overtake him. Not in that ship."

"You are assuming they could not build a ship like the Phoenix Exultant?"

"I suspect their technological level to be less than ours. If they equaled us, why would they hide? And secrecy maintained so diligently across a reach of centuries bespeaks a strong central government, which implies diminished personal liberty, therefore lack of innovation, therefore stagnation. I don't care how smart their Sophotechs might be; even Sophotechs cannot change the laws of physics or the laws of economics, politics, and liberty. I think they have no ship like the Phoenix Exultant. I think they have no men like Phaethon. I do not know what motivates the Silent Ones, or who or what they are. I do not know how long they have been among us, watching us, perhaps influencing us in subtle ways. The only thing I do know, based on what has provoked them to stir from their hiding, is that they fear Phaethon."

He waved his hand at the illusion of stars around him. "He can make all their dreams of empire go away." He closed his fist. The stars vanished. Normal light returned.

Daphne put her hands on her hips and scowled. "Well, if they hate him, they must love you! You and your Hortators were all set to stop Phaethon and kill off his dream. You made him mortal and threw him into the gutter to die. You did all the Silent Oecumene's work for them! You!"

Helion said gravely, 'Tragic circumstance forced our hands. We were seeking to preserve this, the best of civilizations the mind of man can conceive. And even then we offer Phaethon no harm; we merely refused to help him endanger our lives, and urged others not to help him either. Can we be blamed for that?"

Daphne's eyes flashed. "Blame? It is not illegal to be a coward, if that is what you mean! Or a hypocrite. But I would not do everything the law allows, not things I thought were wrong; and you your whole life have said that people ought to avoid what's wrong and ugly and base and inhuman, whether it's legally allowed or not. You said it often enough. An easy thing to say. Hard to do."

Helion's brows drew together. "If I erred in respect to Phaethon, it was an error of fact, not an error of principle. A fact I did not know, nor did anyone in the Golden Oecumene know, was that the Silent Oecumene still somehow survived, and, apparently, has hostile designs upon us. Because of that lucky accident, Phaethon's dangerous dream now does us more good than harm; but if the facts had been as I, before this moment, thought them, than that danger would have done us no good, nor would Phaethon have been right to expose us to it."

Daphne said, "There is a lie at the bottom of everything you say. It is not war you fear, interstellar war: Phaethon never planned for that, and war is not inevitable, just because people are different. War was just an excuse. It's freedom you fear. Lack of control. After uncounted centuries of hatred and violence, viciousness and powerlust, the Sophotechs finally led us to a society which people had never been honest enough, logical enough, to make for themselves. A society where no one, no one at all, can force anyone to do anything, except to stop the use of force. But that wasn't good enough for you! You made your Silver-Gray and your past-looking, romantic movement in art and sociometry, and tried to talk everyone into living in the past. And that wasn't enough for you, either. You and your friends, Orpheus and Vafnir and all that crew, decided to persuade where you could not force, but your goal was the same. You and your College of Horatators were going to use public opinion as a weapon, to bludgeon into the ground anyone who questioned the precious way of life you wanted to set up! Anyone who challenged it! Anyone who wanted to spread it to the stars! But you did not want the freedom you said you were protecting, not for Phaethon! Oh, no! Because there cannot be any pressure of public opinion among the worlds of distant suns; the news is too slow, space is too big. There can still be a government among the stars, if it is a government like ours-small, unobtrusive, utterly scrupulous, unable to do anything except defend the peace, unable to use force except to stop force. Because, with a government like that, wide distance and lack of communication simply do not matter. But what there cannot be among the stars are these things: a College of Hortators; a monopoly, like yours, on Solar Storm control; or a monopoly, as Orpheus has, on eternal life; Vafnir's control over energy sources; Ao Aoen's entertainment empire. And so on."

Helion said mildly, "The danger of violence is still real, if we expand. Don't the actions of the Silent Oecumene spies and agents among us prove that?"

"Our ability to survive violence expands also. Ever since the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity had the power to destroy a planet. But no one can destroy a whole night sky filled with living stars!"

Helion said, "What the Sophotechs gave us is not just a government of endless liberty but also, if I may add, endless libertines. They also gave us, for the first time, an ability to control the precise shape of our destiny, to predict the course of the future, and, if we use it wisely, the power to preserve our beautiful Golden Oecumene against all shocks and horrors. But control is the key. With Sophotechnic help, I can control the raging chaos of the sun himself, and turn all the mindless forces of nature to our work. What Phaethon dreamt may now be needed, but it is still wild and overly ambitious. The fault is mine. He is much like me-me as I would be without a proper caution and sobriety to restrict my acts to those which serve the social good. He is a spirit of reckless fire. That we may now need him, that outside threats now force us to reconcile with him, does not make his recklessness, his heedlessness, his insubordination, somehow turn out to have been virtues all along."

Daphne crossed her arms, her eyes bright with mocking fury. "So that is going to be your apology for stealing Phaethon's immortality and throwing him to the dogs? 'Sorry, sonny boy, but we need you now, oh, and by the way, I was right all along'?!"

Helion's face grew dark with sorrow. He bowed bis head. But all he said was, "The point is now an academic one. Phaethon's exile will no doubt be revoked, since the attack which prompted him to open his memory casket was, after all, quite real."

Daphne's angry voice snapped, "And you think that's it?! No apologies, no regrets?"

Helion spoke softly as if speaking to himself, "Do I regret my part in these events? Certainly I regret the events; but, as for my part, I played it as honorably as I knew how."

Then his voice grew louder. "And honor requires that I will not betray my oath to support the Hortators, even if Aurelian and Earthmind and all the world besides shuns me for so doing. Even if the Hortators are a weak and wicked instrument at times, and fall too harshly upon those who do not merit the punishment they give, yet, nonetheless, the Hortators are the only instrument we have for preserving decency, humanity, propriety, and wholesomeness of life. We would all be inside machines, drunk and mad on endless and perverted dreams, if it were not for them. Without them, there would be no control to this mad whirlwind we call life."

Daphne blazed: "Oh, great! That's an even better apology! "'Tis not that I loved you less, O beloved Phaethon, but that I loved the Hortators more! (Sob!)' Hah! Those Hortators are just bullies, and you know it! So what if what they do is private, and legal, and noncoercive? They're the ones who are always saying that not everything which is legal is right! And I don't care whether you call it coercion or not, they certainly did not try to reason with Phaethon; they tried to overawe and cow him. Well, their system doesn't work too well on people who cannot be cowed! They were wrong, dead wrong. And so were you. Just wake up out of your moping, Helion, and just admit you were wrong."

"An apology ... ? I would weep with joy to see my son again, for I still love him and he is still my son, but I will not stir once inch from the principles which fix my life in place. Son or no son, whether he is right or wrong does not depend on his ties of kinship with me." He stirred and raised his head and sighed, then shrugged and said, "But, no matter! This argument is stale. The deed is done; the point is moot."

Daphne's voice rang out clear and cold, "No, He-lion! It is you who have become moot, your opinion on these matters which is academic! Phaethon builds well; this situation in which you find yourself was constructed by him. His amnesia, his submission to the Hortators at Lakshmi: he was not driven to these things by grief. It was done by calculation, carefully, dispassionately, and he used himself with the same ruthless efficiency he uses on the inanimate forces and materials around him to achieve his well-engineered designs. He wanted time to find a way to bring the Phoenix Exultant out of receivership; he wanted to disarm his opposition."

Helion said, "And where did his calculation go awry?"

Daphne laughed. "Nowhere! You will help and support Phaethon in his attempt, and pay his debts to free his ship, or you will step aside and watch as he takes your wealth, inherited by the legal ruling of the Court, and does it for you. Don't you see yet? Phaethon would never cheat you. He would never use the law in this way except to take back what was already promised him."

"Promised ... ?"

"By you. In the last hour of your last life. During the hour you forgot."

"How can you know this?!"

Daphne smiled a winning smile: "Oh, come now! I know because he knows, and I have shared his memories, as is right with man and wife, during our voyage from Earth. He knows because you told him yourself. You told him the insight, the epiphany which made you laugh before you died, the secret of defeating chaos."

Helion was silent, troubled. The fact that he had given his word to Phaethon, even if he had forgotten what he swore, was not a small thing to him. Helion was not like other men: for him, the thought that his word would not prove good was intolerable.

But he said, "I have already rejected that bargain. Not even to save my soul, or keep my name intact, will I turn my back on what I swore to the Hortators."

"I will tell you anyway, because what you will or won't do does not matter. Listen:

"You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. Your deep probes had given you no advanced warning. In the complex and turbulent reactions seething at the center of the sun, you knew something outside the normal range of circumstances had occurred; some chance coincidence, constructive interference of two convection layers, perhaps, or a sudden cooling of large sections of the undermantle by a mere statistical freak, creating a layer inversion. Something the standard model did not and could not predict. Some tiny change, ever so tiny, leading to complex unpredictable results. In other words, chaos.

"Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm.

"You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependance on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave: they could not even think of dying as possible: how could they think of facing it, unflinching?

"You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished.

"And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away that the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost.

"If all Me is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. "Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. "Voices from the radio screamed at you to transmit your mind to safety, beyond the range of danger. Growing static from the storm drowned out those voices; you laughed, because you, at that moment, were unable to comprehend what it was those voices feared.

"You saw the plasma errupting through shield after shield, almost as if some malevolent intelligence was trying to send a lance of fire to break your Solar Array in two, or vomit up outrageous flames to burn the helpless Phoenix Exultant where she lay at rest, hull open, fuel cells exposed to danger.

"Choas was attempting to destroy your life's work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son's lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well.

"The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra.

When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve.

" 'Chaos has killed me, son,' you said, 'But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life's each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer.

"The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability...."

"And you vowed to support Phaethon's effort, and you died in order that his dream might live."