The Golden Transcendence

THE TRUTH

Daphne said, "Phaethon had outsmarted you, outsmarted the Hortators, the Curia, everyone. Because the real Helion, had he lived, would have helped Phaethon and funded the launch of the Phoenix Exultant. And there were only two possibilities. Either you become enough like the real Helion to satisfy the Curia, or you don't. If you don't, then you are legally dead, and Phaethon inherits your fortune, and the Phoenix Exultant flies. If you do, then you'll be like he was, and you'll support Phaethon, lend him your fortune, and still the Phoenix Exultant flies. Do you see why all your simulations trying to recreate your last thoughts, burning yourself again and again, never worked? Because, deep down, underneath the simulations, or before they began, or after they were over, your one thought was fear. You were afraid to lose yourself. Afraid to lose your identity. Afraid that Helion would be declared dead. But the real Helion did lose himself. He lost his identity, and his life, and everything. He was not afraid to die, much less to be declared dead. Don't you see? This attack by the Silent Oecumene, this weird, slow, hidden war we suddenly find ourselves in, does not change a single thing. If your last storm was caused by an unexpected malicious creature rather than an unexpected malicious whim of fate, it does not matter. Life is still unpredictable. The insight you had, the answer to how to fight against chaos, is the same. Let people like Phaethon establish their own order in the midst of the confusion of the world."

Helion had bowed his head, and placed one hand before his eyes. Daphne could see no expression. His shoulders moved. Was it tears? Rage? Laughter? Daphne could not determine.

Daphne said cautiously, "Helion? What is your answer?"

Helion did not respond or look up. At that same moment, however, there came an interruption.

Two of the energy mirrors in Helion's field of vision lit up with images. One showed, against a starry field, the foreshortened view of a blade of dark gold, with a brilliant fire before it like a small sun.

The rate-of-change figures were astonishing. The object was on a path from transjovial space, normally a two- or three-day voyage. This ship had crossed that distance in under five hours.

This was the Phoenix Exultant, her drives before her, her prow pointed away, decelerating. There seemed to be a halo of lightning around her; charged particles emitted by the sun were being deflected by her hull armor, and the ship had such velocity, and solar space was so thick with particles, that the Phoenix Exultant, flying through a vacuum, was creating a wake. Views to either side, in other color schemes, showed other bands of radiation, diagrams of projected paths.

The Phoenix was descending into the sun. The other mirror that had lit displayed a figure in black armor, the faceplate opened to reveal a lined, harsh, gray-eyed face.

Helion said, "What is this apparition from the past, who comes now so boldly past my doors and wards? By what right do you interrupt where I have asked for privacy, you who wear a face out of forgotten bloody history?"

A slight tension around the corners of the mouth might have been a smile or a grimace of impatience. "This is my own face, sir."

"Good heavens! Atkins?! Have they allowed someone like you to live again?! That means ..."

Daphne said softly: "It means war. 'War and bloodshed, terror and fear; the wailing of widows, the clash of the spear ...'"

Atkins said: "I've never been away, sir. I don't know why you people think I vanish just because you don't need me." He gave an imperceptible movement of a shoulder; his version of a shrug. "No matter. I'm interrupting to tell you you're in grave danger and to ask you to cooperate. There may be a Silent Oecumene thinking machine, called the Nothing Sophotech, hidden inside the sun. We don't know what kind of vehicle or equipment or weaponry it has. So far, Silent Oecumene technology has proven able to introduce signals into the shielded interior of circuits, by either teleporting through, or creating electric charges out of, the base-vacuum rest state. We think they can do this for other particle types as well, and we don't know their range and limitations. The last solar storm, the one that killed the previous Helion, was created and directed by their technology. The Silent Ones are in a position to seize control of the Solar Array. If they do that, especially during the Transcendence, when everyone's brains will be linked up to an interplanetary communication web ... well, you can imagine the results.

From the Array, they could induce prominences to destroy Vafnir's counterterragenesis stations at Mercury Forward Equilateral, crippling our antimatter supplies at the same time. In any case, I'd like to ask you to cooperate. ..."

"I know you from old, Captain Atkins. Or is it 'Marshal' now? You want me to stay here, in harm's way, until the enemy commits himself. Then when he reveals himself by striking at me, you promise to avenge my death by utterly annihilating him, is that it? I do not recall that your somewhat Pyrrhic strategy of winning was all that successful at New Kiev, was it?"

"I'm not going to debate old battles with you, sir. But the Earthmind told me you might cooperate. I told her I was sick of trying to deal with you people who do not seem to understand that sometimes, when the cold facts demand it, you have to risk your life or give your life to win the battle. Since you remember me, Helion, you remember why I say that."

There was something very cold in his tone of voice. Daphne looked back and forth between these two eldest men, wondering what past was between them.

Helion's expression softened. "I remember the kind of sacrifices you were willing to make, Captain Atkins." His expression grew distant, thoughtful. "It is odd. You also stand your ground when everyone else runs away to save themselves, I suppose. We may be more alike than I supposed. What a frightening thought!"

"Are you all done kidding around there, sir, or do you want to help?"

Helion straightened. "I will not desert my Oecumene or my post. Tell me what service I can perform for you. Though I think I can guess...."

"Don't bother guessing. I'll tell you. Phaethon is about to dock that monster ship he's flying at your number six Equatorial Main two-fifty. It's the only place big enough for the Phoenix Exultant"

"You need to give me more time. I have to use my field generators to create a sunspot underneath you as you descend, a cooler area, with a helmet streamer to create a flow of cooler plasma, a stream the Phoenix can follow to come down here to my dock."

"Don't bother. Phaethon says the Phoenix Exultant can descend through the corona without damage. But once we dock, I want you to provision him with what he needs: you can spare the antimatter, I take it?"

"I can spare it," said Helion wryly. His Array controlled thousands of masses of antimatter the size of gas giants.

"And give him your latest intelligence on submantle conditions. The Nothing Sophotech must know we're coming; Earthmind thinks the approach of the Phoenix might tempt the Nothing to show itself. It will probably try to corrupt your whole Array and take control of you personally, if it hasn't already done so." "It has not, to my knowledge." "That doesn't mean much, in this day and age. The other thing I want you to do is direct as many deep probes as you can toward the solar core, to see if we can find any echotrace of the Silent Oecumene ship. All we have right now is a location; we don't know size or what else is there. Also, examine your record to see if any suspicious astronomical bodies fell into the sun in any place your sensors could have seen."

"What else?"

"You stay up top while the Phoenix goes down through the chromosphere into the radiative layer of the core, where the enemy is hiding. You will act as our sounding station, and meteorological eyes-up."

"With no one to help me? It seems a little odd, on a day when everyone else is celebrating, not to sound a universal alarm and call to arms?"

"I think so, too. But the Nothing, smart as it is, may not know how much we know, and if it thinks the Transcendence is going to go off as usual, it may hold its fire until everyone is linked up into one big helpless Transcendent mind. Got it? I don't want to set off the alarm if that will make the Nothing set off its biggest guns."

Helion was silent, thoughtful.

Atkins said, "Well? That's what I want from you. You have a problem with any of this?"

"I have no doubts or reservations. You are not the only one who knows what the word 'duty' means, Captain Atkins."

"Great. And just between you and me, since you're in such a giving mood today ..."

"Yes ... ?"

"Say you're sorry to your kid. He's been moping around ever since we set course for the sun, and it's getting on my nerves. I mean, it would be good for morale."

With another segment of his mind, Helion made contact with his lawyer and accountant subroutines. Aloud, he said, "Very well! You may tell my son, by way of apology, that, by the time he docks at number six, his debts will be cleared, his title reinstated, and the ship he is in shall belong to him once more."

Helion came out of the place still called an air lock, even though it included transformation surgeries, noumenal transfer pools, body shops, neural prosthetics manufactories, and other functions needed to adapt a visitor to the physical environment and mental format of the Phoenix Exultant. This air lock was housed amidships, projecting inward from the hull nine hundred feet, a direction that was, at the moment "down," and surrounded by other housings and machines, all looming like the skyscrapers of some ancient city turned on its head.

Phaethon stood not far away, on a walkway that ran from upside-down rooftop to upside-down rooftop. Behind him, underfoot, far below the fragile railing, rested the fuel cells of the Phoenix Exultant. These cells reached away to each side beyond sight, like an endless beehive of interlocking pyramids, each with a ball of luminous metallic ice at its center.

Helion thought this made a fitting backdrop for his scion-a landscape of frozen antimaterial fire, endless energy held in rigid geometry, capable of vast triumphs or vast destruction. Phaethon wore his gold-adamantium-and-black armor, helmet folded away. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, legs spread, eyes intent and bright; the pose of a youth patiently ready for action.

Helion had dressed in the air lock, constructing a human body (modified for the high solar gravity) and Victorian semiformal dress suit. (Day clothes, of course. Helion long ago determined that no gentleman would sport evening wear while in or near the sun.) He had also constructed a valid legal copy of the receipts for Phaethon's debts, and the petition to the Bankruptcy Court to remove the Phoenix Exultant from receivership. These he had formed to look like golden parchment, stamped with the proper seals and red ribbon. He held up this document, and extended it toward Phaethon.

Before he could say a word, however, Phaethon stepped forward, ignoring the document, and threw his arms around his father. Helion, surprised, raised his arms and embraced his son.

"I never thought I would see you again," said one of them.

"Nor I," said the other.

The document in Helion's hand was quite crumpled and mussed by the time they stepped apart, and Helion dabbed bis joy-wet eyes with it, before he recalled what it was, and extended it sheepishly to his son.

"Thank you, Father; this is the finest of presents," said Phaethon, accepting the crumpled and tearstained mass with a grave and solemn expression. Phaethon looked up. "And Daphne ... ?" Helion nodded at the air lock hatch behind him. "She is still getting changed. You know how women are; she's picking skin color and skeletal structures. I suppose she is trying to find a body which will look as good in this gravity as a Martian's." (Martian women were notoriously vain of the buoyant good looks then-low gravity imparted.)

Phaethon looked pensively at the air lock door. Helion, seeing that look, smiled to himself.

Helion stepped to the rail. "What is the meaning of this intricate activity?" he said, pointing upward.

"Mm?" Phaethon pulled his gaze reluctantly away from the air lock door. "Ah, that. The Phoenix Exultant is installing her solar bathyspheric modifications. There, ranged along the inner hull, are magnetic induction generators. This will create a field along the hull which will act like the treads of a burrowing vehicle, using magnetic current to force dense plasma to either side of the ship, propelling her forward and downward." "Crawling your way into the sun?" They both wore the same expression of ironic humor. "If you like," Phaethon nodded.

"Your refrigeration lasers, I trust, will be adequate to the task? The geometry of your hull does not minimize surface area. Also, the increasing heat of each successive layer as you approach the core exceeds the drive combustion heat of, at least, my bathyspheric probes."

Phaeton pointed. "Can you see about forty kilometers aft of us? That is the line of advancing workers clearing an insulation space of a half kilometer inward of every hull surface, which I intend to flood with superconductive liquid. This liquid will circulate heat to my port and starboard drive cores, which I am using as heat sinks. The centerline drive core will be used as a refrigeration laser, and can easily generate heat greater than the solar core."

Helion did a few hundred calculations in his head, frowned at the answers he got, and said, "So great a volume? With your hull, I would have thought your reflective albedo would near one hundred per cent. Why are you taking in so much heat?"

Phaethon pointed overhead and sent a signal into Helion's sense filter, to show him exterior camera views of work being done outside the hull. "My communication antennae and thought ports are being replaced by crystalline adamantium optic fibers of a bore too large to allow the thought ports to close. I will be taking in heat at these places."

Helions said slowly, "Why in the world are you entering combat with the Second Oecumene Sophotech- who, from what Atkins told me, excels at many forms of virus combat and mind war-with your thought ports jammed open? You will not be able to cut off your ship's mind from external communication, unless your circuit breakers are-"

"The circuit breakers have been replaced by multiple alternate lines of hardwire, welded point to point. There is no way to break the circuit. There is no way to shut out external communication from inside. The hardwire connections cannot even be physically wrecked faster than they can regrow." "But... why?"

"Because this is not going to be a combat. It will be something much more definitive and permanent."

"I do not understand. Please explain it to me." But at that moment, the air lock door opened, and there was Daphne, radiantly beautiful, her eyes alight with cool joy.

Phaethon stared, a smile growing on his features, as if he were storing the image of Daphne at the threshold in his permanent long-term memory. She wore a short-sleeved blouse and long skirt of pale silken fabric, crisp and shining, and a beribboned straw skimmer of the type called a sun hat. Despite the high gravity, she had somehow designed her feet and ankles to be able to wear high-heeled pumps. She stood smiling, her eyes twinkling, one hand raised to hold her hat to her head, as if she expected some impossible breeze to blow through the deck.

Phaethon stepped forward, arms raised as if to embrace her. "Darling, I have so much to tell you...."

She fended him off with her free hand. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your father? Hello, Helion!" Phaethon stepped back, puzzled. He said, "What? You know him. You were just in the air lock with him." Helion said dryly to Daphne, "Don't toy with the boy. He's confused enough as it is. I'm trying to learn his master plan for how he intends to survive the next few hours." With an ostentatious gesture, Helion draw out his pocketwatch, clicked open the cover, scrutinized the dial. "Please consummate your kissing and making up with dispatch. I'd like to conclude my conversation with him."

Daphne put her hands on her hips, glaring at Helion, "Hmph! And what makes you think, may I ask, that I'd kiss and make up with a single-minded, pigheaded clod who does not have the sense to see what's right in front of his nose, who keeps running off, getting in trouble, getting lost, getting shot at, losing and finding bits and pieces of his memory he cannot keep straight, ruining parties, building starships, starting wars, upsetting everybody, and who keeps saying I'm not his wife whenever he's losing any arguments with me, which he does all the time?"

Phaethon, from behind her, took her shoulders in his strong hands, and turned her body to face him, taking her in his arms, despite any protest or struggle she might have made. She put her little fists against his chest, and pushed, but in the heavy gravity, she only succeeding in losing her balance, and she found herself standing on tiptoe, both leaning backward and pressed up against him, caught in the magnificent strength of his arms.

He lowered his head and stared into her eyes. "I think you will," he said softly. "You are the only version, the only person, who has ever urged me to pursue my dream; you are the only person whom I would forgo that dream to possess. I saw the first during our long trip together from Earth; to recognize the second, it required me to see myself when another man was possessed by my thoughts. Those thoughts were always of you, my darling, my best, my beloved. And it is not the old Daphne whom I loved, whom I love now, but you. I will say one last time that you are not my wife; because I married her, your elder version, not you. You I shall marry, if you will have me; and then I will never call you anything other than my wife, my beloved wife, again."

Her eyes were shining, drinking in the sight of him, and her cheeks had blushed a delicate rose hue. She shrugged her shoulders a bit, as if trying to get away, but her hands were pinned by his embrace. "You take me a lot for granted, mister...." she said. Her voice was breathless. "What if I say no?"

"I offer, as my gift to the bride, my life and my ship and my future, all for you to share with me, and every star in the night sky. What is your answer?"

When she parted her lips to speak, he kissed her. Whatever words she may have wished to say were smothered into little happy moans. Perhaps he knew what her answer would be. Her straw hat fell lightly from her tilting head and fluttered to the walkway. The two ribbons of the bow were twined around each other, snarled into one.

Helion politely turned his back, and pretended to consult his pocketwatch. "Isn't it more traditional for the man to kneel on occasions of this nature?" he inquired of no one in particular.

Diomedes of Neptune and a mannequin representing Marshal Atkins came out from a nearby railway terminal and began sliding along the surface of the walkway toward them.

Helion walked toward the two men, using a mental command to nullify the action of the surface substance of the walkway, which otherwise would have carried him forward without effort. His love of discipline required that he avoid, when he could, such artificial aids for walking.

Atkins saw what was taking place over Helion's shoulder, dug in his heel as a signal to stop the walkway. Either through politeness or embarrassment, Atkins cleared his throat, clasped his hands behind his back, and stepped to one side of Helion, turning to face him, so that he was not looking at the source of the moans, giggles, and murmurs beyond.

Atkins said to Helion, "I've examined your records. You'll be happy to know that the previous Sophotechs working on this station were not destroyed because of catastrophic failure of the energy environment, as you thought. They committed suicide in order to stop the spread of the mental virus which had taken control of them. They were gambling that your previous version would be able to quell the storm without their aid. The good news there is that means your present system looks secure. In order to drive the Phoenix Exultant down toward the core, we need you to use your Array to create a subduction current in the plasma, large enough and fast enough-a whirlpool, actually-to suck the ship down into the location in the outer core radiative zone where the enemy is waiting. Can you do it?"

"I can bring two equatorial currents into offset collision to create a vortex whose core will have low density, creating a sunspot large enough to swallow planets whole. How far down into the opaque deep of the sun I can drive the vortex funnel, or what unprecedented storms and helmet streamers will result, remains yet to be seen. Hello, Captain Atkins. It is good to see you. How do you do? I am fine, thank you. I see the passing centuries have not altered your ... ah ... refreshingly brusque manners."

Atkins's face was stony. "Some of us don't think polished formalities are the most important thing in life, if you don't mind my saying so, sir. Not when there is a war on."

Helion arched an eyebrow. "Indeed, sir? Those niceties which make us civilized, in the opinion of many accomplished and profound thinkers, are of more importance during emergencies than otherwise. And if not to protect civilization, what justification does the mass slaughter called war ever have?"

"Don't start with me, Mr. Rhadamanth. This is an emergency."

Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. "I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?"

Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them.

Atkins put his hand on Diomedes's elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. "Perhaps not at this time," Atkins said, straight-faced.

"They are young and in love," explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes's view. "So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once."

Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. "There's nothing like that on Neptune."

Helion murmured, "Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm ... ?"

"It looks very old-fashioned," said Diomedes.

Helion said, "It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness."

Atkins said, "It's what young men do before they go to war."

Diomedes said, "It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I'm not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mind if I helped him."

"He'd mind." Atkins interrupted curtly. "Really. He'd mind."

"Upon this occasion, I feel I must agree with Captain Atkins," added Helion.

The two men exchanged a glance. The tension which had been in their features just a moment ago was gone. They were both very old men; Helion had been four hundred years old when noumenal immortality had been invented; Atkins, living then as an artificially preserved brain inside a battle cyborg, was rumored to be even older. They both remembered a time when things were different.

Helion almost smiled. "I can create a vortex to pull the Phoenix Exultant down toward the outer core layers. I can do whatever else cruel necessity demands. I can send, without any outward tear, my son to battle and perhaps to death in the dark, unquiet depths of this hellish sphere, vaster than worlds, this universe of elemental fire which I have tamed. But I quite assure you that I shall know a reason why."

Atkins said, "I'm hoping Phaethon will brief us and catch us up to speed. He said he would."

Helion interrupted in surprise, "Marshal! You mean this is no plan of yours? Where are the Sophotechs? Where is the Parliament? Surely this voyage must be made under military command?"

Grim lines gathered around Atkins's mouth, and his eyes twinkled. This was his sign of extreme amusement, what other men would have shown by loud triumphant laughter. "Well, sir, it's good to know that you have so much faith in me. But the War Mind told me we did not have the budget to prosecute the campaign in the way I wanted-besieging the sun, using the Array to stir up the core, and relying on ground-based energy systems in the meanwhile-and the simulations showed my plan might lead to the destruction and loss of one fifth of the minds in the Transcendence, and the siege would have to last until Sol turned into a Red Giant, before the density would be low enough to make a successful direct assault. The Parliament did come on-line during the five-hour trip out here from transjovial space, and offered your son a letter of Marque and Reprisal. But your son seemed to trust that every man of goodwill in the Golden Oec-umene would voluntarily combine their efforts, guided by sound Sophotechnic advice, to do whatever this struggle might demand, that strict military discipline was not required yet. And since your budget and his ship are worth more than the entire tax intake of that tiny, strangled, weak, hands-off, laissez-faire, do-nothing antiquarian society we call a government in this day and age, they did not have anything to offer him. So they're out of the loop; I'm out of the loop; no one gets a say in how or if our Golden Oecumene is going to be saved, except our hero here, the spoiled and stubborn little rich man's son. If you don't mind my saying so."

"Not at all, Captain. You have no idea how relieved I am to learn that the important decisions of this time are being decided by someone other than the jack-booted Prussian discipline addicts and mass-minded meddling do-gooders who have made up previous governmental efforts along these lines."

Diomedes looked back and forth between the two of them. He spoke in a voice of slow wonder: "Do you two know each other?"