The Phoenix Exultant

THE SWORD OF THE LEVIATHAN

He called the lovely little cottage in which he lived his "quarters."

"Ma'am, you must know that there is really nothing I can do for you."

"You can get me some tea, Marshal."

"Mm. Fair enough."

There was a pool of life water beneath the polished wooden floor. He slid a panel aside, stooped, and grew two fragile bowls of shell, which he dipped in the fluid once again. The heat of the nanoconstruction warmed the tea, and the unused organics were disguised as mint steam and wafted from the bowls.

Daphne looked at the bare pale walls. An old-fashioned dreaming coat of woven gold and green hung on pegs on one wall. It was stiff, as if brittle with disuse. It faced a standing screen inscribed with bright red dragon signs. The four glyphs read: Honor, Courage, Fortitude, Obedience. There was thought circuitry woven in the red letters, Daphne saw, and she guessed (to her disbelief) their purpose.

Communion circuits; mind links; thousand-cycle communications-and-relay forms. Whoever stared at this screen, if he had the proper responders built into his nervous system, would merge with a near-Sophotech-level supermind, and control millions or billion of ongoing operations. In this case (what else could it be?) military operations.

Impossible. This simple screen could not be the control and command for whatever weaponry and armament, robotic legions or nanoplagues or fighting machines the Golden Oecumene still possessed? Could it? (If there were still such machines lying around. Daphne had the vague notion the all the old war machines were stored in some museum somewhere, and that there were a very great number of them.)

This spartan room hardly seemed the proper setting for the central command-room. Shouldn't there be flags and plumes on the walls? Racks of spears? Or big maps with women clerks in snappy uniforms pushing little toy ships across tabletops? Or an auditorium of linked vulture-cyborgs staring coldly at some wide holographic globes, with dark wires leading into their heads? That was the way it always looked in the history romances.

On the fourth wall, facing the door, was a small rack, carrying a musket, and (when he undid it from his sash so that he could sit) the long sword. The musket had a smooth wooden stock, a barrel of dark metal, and a wave guide of polished brass. The sword was in a sheath of hand-tooled leather, and a knot of red silk cord draped from the rings.

The knife stayed in his belt when he sat.

There was no other furniture in the room, except for unor-namented woven mats on which they sat, and a short tripod holding a rose translucent bowl of fire.

They sipped tea.

"Do you live here alone?"

He said in a matter-of-fact voice: "My wife left me when I wouldn't give up the Service."

The cold, neutral way in which he said that reminded her, for some reason, of Phaethon. It was as if Phaethon had just spoken in her ear, and said: My wife drowned herself when I would not give up the Starship.

"I'm sorry," Daphne said in a soft voice.

"No matter."

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"I'd rather you did not."

"Why do you stay on as a soldier? I mean, isn't the idea of a soldier in this day and age a little-oh, I don't know-"

" 'Anachronistic'?"

"I was going to say 'stupid.' "

A look of distaste began to harden in his eyes, but then, suddenly, and for no reason she could see, he laughed in good humor. "Miss Daphne Tercius Eveningstar! Aren't you a piece of work! Blunt, aren't we?"

She smiled her second most dazzling smile, and spread her hands as if in helplessness. "Most people set their sense-filters to rephrase incoming comments too rude for them to tolerate. I guess I'm not in the habit of watching what I say. But don't worry, I'm sure you'll recover."

"No one is in the habit of watching what they say, these days. Who said that an unarmed society was a rude society?"

Daphne said, "I think it was someone who was killed in a duel. Hamilton, maybe?"

Atkins snorted, and said, "No one is in the habit of living real life, dealing with limitations, making decisions. You Sinkers all live in little bubbles of perception, and let the mentality carry your lives and loves and thoughts back and forth between the bubbles. You should try being real sometime."

"Sinkers" was slang to refer to all the people who wore sense-filters by those (usually primitivists) who did not. The implication was that a "sinker" was just one step away from drowning.

Daphne said stiffly, "I was born real, thank you, and I get enough of that sort of preaching from my parents. Reality is overrated, in my opinion." It was not until after she spoke that a more forceful objection occurred to her: Had it not been for the simulation technology, for mentality recording and mind-edited and other so-called unrealities, she herself, Daphne-doll Tercius, would never had been "born" at all.

Neither would have Phaethon been.

"I disagree, ma'am. Reality is real. And that's why I stay in the Service."

"Why-?"

He shrugged. "Because it's real. It's like I'm the only real man on the planet. I stand guard so that all the rest of you can play. That's what I like about your husband. What he's doing is real, too. A lot less boring than guard duty, too."

"There hasn't been a war, or even a fight, since the early Sixth Era."

"Well." Sarcasm drawled from his voice. "I wonder why that should be."

"You think it's because we're all in awe and terror of you?"

The line of tension in his cheek, which served him for a smile, showed that this was exactly what he thought. But he said, "You didn't come here to debate political theory with me, ma'am."

"I wanted to ask you about my husband."

"Shoot."

She covered her mouth with her glove when she burst into giggles.

He said, "Something wrong?"

"No, no," she said, trying to smother her smile, "It's just that expression, 'shoot.' Coming from you. It's just sort of funny."

He looked blank.

Daphne said earnestly, "I wanted to ask you about the invaders chasing my husband. Are they from another star system? I communed with his memory, and found out that you were investigating something along those lines ..."

He snorted, and smiled sort of a half smile, and shook his head, and said, "Ma'am, for one thing, I asked your husband not to go telling everyone what I was looking into. For a second thing, there is no invasion. Would I be sitting home alone if there were? At least an invasion would give me something to do."

"He saw you tracking a Neptunian legate."

"Maybe the Sophotechs felt sorry for me, or something, and they advised the Parliament to assign me to look into it. I'm not allowed to do police work, mind you, but any investigation that falls under military intelligence-and I guess that includes people pretending to be outside threats-falls into my bailiwick. The whole thing turned out to be a masquerade prank. You may not know, that there are people who really do not like the fact that I am allowed to exist. They don't like armed men. They don't like all the bombs and viruses and particle-beam arrays and thought-worms that are all maintained at public expense. Nuclear bombs, supernuclear bombs, neutron bombs, neutrino bombs, quasar bombs, pseudo-matter bombs, antimatter bombs, supersymmetry-reaction bombs. And so, from time to time, people pull tricks on me, or go cry wolf, just to see if I'll come running."

"A prank ...."

"I can tell you who was behind it this time. Why not? My report to the Parliamentary Warmind Advisory Committee is a matter of public record, even if no one in the public will ever trouble herself to go view it." He looked her in the eye. "The Nevernexters were the culprits. It was Unmoiqhotep and his crew."

Daphne was puzzled. "Phaethon said the Golden Oecumene was under attack by creatures from another star, or from a lost colony, or something. How could it be a prank?"

Atkins shrugged, and made the hand sign asking if she wanted more tea. She waved her finger in the negative. He ordered his tea bowl to refill itself.

He said, "You know who Unmoiqhotep is, don't you? He used to be a she; she was born Ungannis of Io, Gannis' clone-daughter. Her mother was Hathor-hotep Twenty Minos of the Silver-Grey Manor. Unmoiquotep hates both her parents, hates the Gannis-minds, the Silver-Greys, hates everyone. She never got over the fact that, these days, carrying someone's genes doesn't automatically let you inherit all his stuff when he dies and changes bodies, and so she changed her sex and changed her name and eventually became a big wheel among the Nevernext movement."

"But Phaethon saw you chasing a Neptunian."

"I was chasing someone who was downloaded into a Neptunian body form, that's for sure. But it wasn't a Neptunian. He flew up into the air and went orbital, remember? To make a rendezvous with his pinnace craft? Well, how many Neptunians can afford their own spaceyacht? Most of them come in-system on very-low-thrust orbits, and they just sleep for twenty-five years while they are traveling. Wearing nothing but their own bodies, or maybe a layer of ablative foil. They don't have many ships. And the name of the pinnace was Cernous Roc. A play on words. As in a nodding, pendulous rock, get it? Now, who ever heard of a Neptunian naming a ship after a mythical bird like a Roc? But someone whose mother was a Silver-Grey might have. All you Silver-Greys name your ships after mythical birds. And this might also explain why Ungannis wanted to involve Phaethon in her prank. He was a Silver-Grey, like her mom, but, unlike Ungannis, Phaethon made his own fortune without ever having to inherit money from Helion. See?"

Daphne said stiffly, "Don't say 'all you Silver-Greys,' please. I am no longer associated with that school. I now patronize the Red Eveningstar Manor."

"Sorry to hear that. The Silver-Greys aren't as goofy as the Reds."

"Did you say 'goofy' ... ? 'Goofy'?"

"Sorry, ma'am. I thought your sense-filter would automatically read-in 'eccentric,' or 'droll,' or something. My apologies." His face showed no trace of a smile, but his eyes twinkled.

Daphne said, "But your investigation modules, those little black globes Phaethon saw, one of them said you were detecting nanomachinery indicating advanced Sophotechnology; it estimated that it was a technology of a type that came from the Fifth Era, but had evolved into an unrecognizable form. Isn't that something which could only come from a colony?"

"All a hoax. Ungannis was feeding false info into my network."

Daphne paused, looking skeptical. "The prank actually was interfering with military computer systems . .. ?"

"Pardon my language, ma'am, but my military systems are crap. The taxpayers don't want to pay for expensive systems for me; my hardware is a century out of date, and some of my software is a week behind the latest breakthrough. Your husband was able to break in on my secure line and crack my code in about half a second. So why should it have been any harder for Ungannis? Then the Earthmind came and gave me a new system, one that was more secure. If you've read Phaethon's memories, you must've seen when that happened. When that new system came on-line, I was able to find out what was really going on, without any prankster interference."

"So ... none of it was real... ?"

"Don't get me wrong. Unmoiqhotep is going to be severely punished. Interfering with government military equipment, even in peacetime, is a felony, and exposes the perpetrator to capital-level pain, if they are convicted. You don't even want to think about some of the horror scenarios the Curia can make a convict experience, when it comes to military crimes."

"Is it like the fire-emergency scenarios?" Daphne had heard, once, of a prankster convicted of interfering with Fire Brigade software, being condemned to be burnt to death, over and over, or watching loved ones bum, in every possible worst-case scenario of every person he might have endangered.

"Don't even think about it, ma'am. Spoil your day." Atkins ordered his tea bowl to dissolve into a spray of perfume, and stood up in one quick, graceful unfolding of his legs. "I'm afraid that's about all I can do for you, ma'am."

Daphne looked up, "But you haven't done a damn thing!"

Atkins eyes narrowed into a type of smile. "I'm the least free man in all of the Golden Oecumene, ma'am. No one else has so many restrictions on his behavior. What I say, how I act, what I imply, everything is covered by the regulations. It's because I'm dangerous. You don't want to live in a society where the armed forces can just jump up and go off and do whatever they please. I have been entrusted with immense powers. I could crack the planet in half and fry it like an egg, with some of the weapons systems I'm trained on. But only if the Parliament declares war, and the Shadow Administers approve. You see? I'm not a cop. I'm not here to help you. I can't. Not in the way you want."

Daphne stood up, feeling defeated. "Do you have any advice for me?"

"Officially? No. I don't set policy. Unofficially? Go see your husband, if you can find out where he's hiding, and get him to take a noetic examination. The public records all show that the College of Hortators has to reinstate him back in society if he had a good reason to break his word and open his memory box. Thinking you're being invaded by a foreign power seems like a damn good reason to me. It'll come eventually."

Daphne was adjusting her lace cravat. Now she looked up, surprised. "You believe that?"

"That Earth will be attacked someday? Sure. Bound to happen. Maybe not soon. Give it a million years. I'll still be here. Things'll heat up. This slow period can't last forever."

"Well-I guess I wish you luck-no. No, actually I don't. I hope you stay bored and idle forever!"

"Yes, ma'am. You said it, ma'am." Some ancient habit, or ritual, made him take up his sword again, now that he was standing, and he thrust the scabbard through his sash.

Now he stepped toward the door with her. They stood on the deck in front of the cottage. Daphne's wild horse was cropping the grass nearby. The wind was fresh and sweet. Autumn leaves rippled along far treetops.

Atkins said, "I've heard some people say that this isn't really a paradise we live in. They don't know jack."

Daphne looked at him sidelong. What a strange man. "If you like all this peace and plenty, then why are you a fighter?"

"You've answered your own question."

"But we don't have any enemies. No insanity, no poverty (except as a form of social punishment) no diseases, no violent crime. No enemies."

"Not yet."

She called a command to the horse, who trotted over and nuzzled her. Atkins backed up. Daphne was amused. Was the big and strong last warrior in the world nervous around horses? How ironic. She petted the maverick's nose.

She mounted up. Then, she leaned down, saying, "One last question, Mr. Atkins. In your investigation, was Unmoiqhotep rich enough to carry out all this complex foolery by himself? Or did he have help?"

"You can read my report. A lot of the material and software Unmoiqhotep used came from Gannis."

"With his knowledge or without it? Was Gannis helping his child?"

"A noetic exam would tell that. But I turned the whole matter over to the constabulary once it was clear there were no Oecumenical security interests involved. A Sophotech named Harrier took over the case. I don't know where it stands now."

"But there is no invasion? No secret group of aliens, no evil Sophotech hunting for my husband?"

Atkins looked at her horse, looked up at her, and then turned and looked off at the lake on the horizon. "No, ma'am. Not that I can tell. Or, if they are here, they're too smart for my out-of-date equipment to find them. And I hate to say it, but no one is going to raise the taxes to give me better equipment just because your husband is deluded. But I hope you find him, ma'ma. I really do."

"Oh, I'll find him," Daphne said. "I know how he thinks!"

And she kicked with her spurs and went galloping off in a fine display of horsemanship. Atkins, in his back kimono, stood in the shadows of the door, watching her depart, his face utterly expressionless.

At that point, the record in Daphne's ring ended.

Phaethon opened his faceplate and turned toward where Daphne was on the cot. Ironjoy, whose eyes were not like basic human eyes, had no lighting fixtures in here; the only light came from two beeswax candles (which Phaethon had asked Daughter-of-the-Sea to make for him) which stood in pools of their own wax atop the windowsills.

In that subtle and living yellow light, Daphne looked unself-conciously luxurious, leaning on one elbow, her other hand draped casually across the full curve of her hip, watching him without a hint of tension, placid as a waiting cat.

The windows behind her were mute, and added nothing to the cold, moonlit scene outside. The wall behind her was barren and inanimate steel. The cot, like something out of the Dark Ages, was a flat, dry inanimate cloth surface, not a reactive sleeping pool. The lights here were primitive candles, dumb things, and did not shift position or hue deliberately to display her to advantage. Yet even in the midst of this gross poverty, she had an aura of elegance to her, of richness.

How did she look so comfortable, so perfect? Was it that she had been raised among primitivists and must have (Phaethon winced at the thought) slept on such cots as a girl? Or was this a Warlock discipline, some glamour or mind-trick she had learned as a witch? Or some careful art she had mastered from the odalisques and concubines and hedonists of Red Eveningstar Mansion, the ability to look fine in the midst of coarseness?

At first, she had been leafing through some document shining in the surface of his child slate. But later she had given up the pretense of being interested in any other thing and simply watched him as he reviewed her story, her eyes half-lidded. The birds in the golden tapestries to either side of him twittered under her lidded stare.

As his eyes traveled slowly up and down her form, she smiled a slow smile, raising her chin slightly, and uttering a soft note in her throat, a sigh of pleasure, as if his gaze were warm sunlight.

Phaethon had to remind himself that this was not his wife.

With a brusque gesture, Phaethon took her librarian's ring off his gauntlet finger and tossed it lightly across to the couch. "You've edited out the most important thoughts. Why break off at this point? Merely to have some sort of dramatic pause? What was your plan from the beginning? What was in the memory casket Eveningstar gave you? What was the golden machine Aurelian gave you?"

He nodded toward where her knapsack lay on the floor. Its flap was open. One corner of the golden circuit-box Aurelian had given her was visible in the candlelight, shining.

Phaethon's voice took on an angrier note: "And... why the hell didn't Rhadamanthus say something at my inquest hearing? Why in the world did his models of me think I would have authorized his stupid decision not to speak? That's insane! He could have saved me from all this ... !"

He waved his hand around the small, shadow-crowded cabin, a gesture encompassing all the poverty, rudeness, cruelty, and coarseness this whole environment implied.

He drew a breath, controlled his tone of voice, and said: "And why the hell did Atkins lie? I am not self-deluded, and this is not a fantasy. Or perhaps I was deluded in one respect; I had been expecting Atkins to support me. I had been expecting honesty."

Daphne had caught the ring, smiled at it, and slipped it with a graceful gesture back onto her left ring finger. "Lie? How could anyone lie, these days? Noetic examination is too easy."

Phaethon shook his head, looking baffled and exasperated. "How is any of this possible, these days?"

Then he said: "But I am convinced of the reality of dishonesty, immorality, and filth; it took me only three days among the Afloats to convince me of that. Even the best among them was a woman who raised her children entirely in simulation, entirely safe and cut off from the rest of the world, but carefully structured their brains to keep them retarded, children forever, so they would never be adult enough to have the right, nor smart enough to conceive of the possibility, of escaping her smothering love and waking to the real world. The second best purveyed child pornography and addictive ritual cannibal-murder dreams. The third bought up ancient works of art, priceless portraits and famous sculpture, just so he could publicly destroy them, burning books and bombing archaeological digs. The worst stored lethal war-viruses and old atomic warheads on his property, in the most unsafe containment the law allowed, never attacking anyone, never setting off his weapons, but always hoping, in his thoughts, for an accident. None of this was strictly illegal, mind you!"

The words came out in a harsh rush, as if a reservoir of disgust for the Afloats (and perhaps for his whole situation) had been building up in him for quite some time, and was eager for a place into which to discharge.

He finished in a quiet, steady tone: "But my distaste for the Hortators has certainly ebbed. We need them, or something like them. Am I seen as such a horrible creature as that? Is that what Atkins thinks I am?"

She said, "Accept that Atkins is telling the truth. Some of your thoughts and memories are false. You haven't even asked me why I'm here or what I know! I have a way to save you."

Phaethon shook himself from his reverie, and darted a stern glance at her. "What about all the thoughts missing from your ring? Why did you break off your story?"

Daphne sighed. Apparently Phaethon would ask questions in his own way, or not at all. She said simply: "I broke off because I haven't made any entries recently. I haven't had the time. I was busy looking for you."

"Looking ... ? Why not just ask a Sophotech? They must have known where I was."

"Oh, brilliant. Why not just ask Nebuchadnezzar? Maybe then Neo-Orpheus and Emphyrio and Socrates and I would come skipping down the Rainbow Road to your address, singing chim-chime songs, with bells tied to our shoes, and our elbows linked together, just like the Three Vivamancers at the end of the Children's Opera. But somehow I think the Hortators would have found it easier to stop me if I had done that, don't you think? There is such a thing as being subtle, you know."

"So how did you find me?"

Now her smile returned. "I picked up the trail at Kisumu, of course. Everyone knew it was you who had ruined the overture of the Deep Ones' great-song. But that vulture-cyborg man (the one who thinks he is Bellipotent Composition, your friend ... ?) didn't have any records in the Middle Dreaming. Rhadamanthus could not, at first, find out where he was, or where he had taken you."

"Rhadamanthus was helping you?"

"I wasn't exiled, not officially, not really, until the moment I spoke to you."

"Oh. Of course."

"But, anyway, if I hadn't figured out that you had been taken to Ceylon, even Rhadamanthus could not have found you."

"Could not? I thought the Sophotechs tracked the movements of everyone?"

"But they still play by the rules, and they don't let themselves know what they're not supposed to know. On the other hand, they're smart about manipulating rules. Once we knew you were in Ceylon, we found Bellipotent's entry record, and, from that, Rhadamanthus's lawmind was able to find more records. There was some legal loophole he used to force the air-traffic control sub-Sophotechs to give up Bellipotent's passenger manifest. Some legal fine-print rule; I didn't try to understand it."

A clue fell into place. "That was you? Bellipotent called me when you raided his records. But why did you give a masquerade name? Why did you log on as me?"

Now she laughed, tossing her head. "Darling! And you call yourself a Silver-Grey! Guardian of ancient tradition! I logged on as myself. I am Mrs. Phaethon Rhadamanth, your wife. That was the name I used."

He said nothing, but the quiet, level, sad glance in his eyes held the message: but you are not my wife.

She swung her feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the cot. Her hands gripped the cot edge to either side of her. She was leaning forward, her shoulders hunched in a half-shrug, her head tilted up. The posture somehow looked both submissive and defiant. She said: "And don't tell me I'm not! I remember our marriage ceremony and I remember our marriage night and I know where you keep your toss-files and why you don't like eggs! And don't tell me my memories are false! You have false memories, too, and you haven't corrected yours!"

He said, "Please do not force me to be cruel, miss."

Interrupting: "How dare you call me 'miss'!"

He continued: "... I am quite fond of you, and I esteem your friendship, but, nonetheless ..."

She rolled her eyes. "Sometimes you sound so pompous! You get that from Helion, you know. Remember the time you and I reincarnated in that subterranean kingdom? After you got out of the rebirthing cells, you lurked around for days, because you could not control your noses, and you didn't want anyone to see you in public, with seven nostrils twitching every which-way. It was so funny! But it was pomposity. You didn't want your feelings hurt. Or how about on our second honeymoon at Niagara? We put on navicular bodies and made love while going over the falls. You were afraid then, too! Well, now you're afraid of my feelings for you. Don't be."

He said nothing.

She said in a soft, cold voice: "I know why we never had children, too."

He spoke abruptly, interrupting before she could continue: "You have parts of my wife's memories, yes!" Then, more softly: "And I am very fond of you, yes. Very fond, how could I not be? But... you are not my wife."

She shrugged a little, and smiled a supremely confident smile. Her teeth were white in the soft shadows of the candlelight. "If we had not been meant for each other, I would not have been able to find you. You uploaded a dream last night. That was my dream. I wrote it. I kept a counter to see how many people were dreaming my dream, and who they were. When Hamlet's name came up, I knew to search Ceylon for you. I know you; I remember you. I remember us. I can remember what we mean to each other. Can't you?"

Phaethon was getting upset. "You have most of her memories, yes, I grant you. But you don't know why she left me, damn it. You don't remember drowning yourself, smothering your soul in false memories just to kill off your memory of me. You don't know why she did that!"

She glanced at the knapsack, and then quickly back again. It was a guilty, furtive movement. Her face was troubled.

Phaethon eyes widened. A note of anger was in his voice: "You do know-!"

He took a stride across the room toward the knapsack. He snatched it up.

She said, "No, I..." And jumped to her feet, a nervous, quick movement. All composure and grace was gone.

He ripped the flap of the knapsack open. "She told you, didn't she? She told you, and she did not tell me." He yanked out the silver memory casket. He tilted it toward the window. Dim candlelight traced letters in the surface.

A graceful and feminine handscript on the casket lid read:

To be delivered to my emancipated partial self before the event of her permanent and irreversible death, cryo-sequestration, exile, radical redaction, or any other final withdrawal from organized civilization.

Emergency wakeup, memory reset, and sanity-restoration code.

Limited power of attorney.

This document overrides all prior Eveningstar instructions.

(Sealed) Daphne Prime Semi-Rhadamanthus Self-Embraced, Constructed Indep-Cortex (Emotion-sharing, limited club), Base Neuroform (with lateral connections), Silver-Grey Manorial Schola, Era 7004 (Pre-Compression).

Phaethon's knuckles were white on the silver lid. "She gave you the password. Not me. I begged Eveningstar to tell. I begged and begged. She'll tell you, not me. You can bring her back to life. Not me. For you, she'll come alive again. But never, not ever, for me ..."

His knuckles were white on the lid, but the casket would not open for him. Suddenly exhausted, he leaned against the wall. He feet began to slide, scratching against the floorboards with a raucous noise. He did not try to catch himself, nor did he unhand the casket. Instead, he collapsed and sat down heavily, his back against the wall, his legs sprawled out carelessly. He bowed his head over the casket in his lap.

Once or twice his shoulders shook, but he made no noise. There was something very dull and hollow in his eyes.

Daphne stepped over to him, her hand reaching out, as if she were about to give comfort. But then she paused, stepped back, and said: "That casket is useless by itself. Even if the old version of me should wake, she will not leave her life and go into exile to be with you here. You must prove yourself correct, expose the fraud that has been perpetrated upon the Hortators, restore the honor of your name, and return from exile. It's the other case in my knapsack you want. The gold tablet. Haven't you figured out by now what that must be? I endured everything I have endured, all this pain and trouble, just to bring it to you."

Curiosity, in Phaethon, was even stronger than grief. He drew his head up. "What is it?" His voice was dull and low.

She gestured toward where he had dropped the knapsack, an elegant flip of the wrist, like a mensal hostess displaying some particularly delectable dessert. "You're the engineer, Lover. You'll recognize it."

He put the silver casket carefully aside and pulled the large gold tablet out of the knapsack. Phaethon straightened, surprise and wonder on his features, climbed to his feet again, with the golden tablet gleaming in his hands. One whole surface, he saw, was patterned with a mosaic of reader-heads and thought-ports, their several shapes and sizes fitted to each other as snugly as a successful puzzle, with no overlap and no empty spaces left over.

He looked up, "It is a noetic-examination circuit."

She spoke with a note of triumph in her voice: "And it's not connected to the mentality. Its an independent unit, isolated, sterile, and safe. Even you cannot believe that it is being influenced by these invader enemies of yours. You see? You do not have to log on to the mentality to prove the memories the Hortators saw were concoctions. Someone has tampered with your brain. That machine will let you prove it. You can prove it to the world; and to yourself."

She smiled again: "Use it, and we can go home, and we can live happily ever after."

He glanced down at the silver casket at his feet, then glanced up at her, his eyes narrowed.

Daphne's lips compressed, a line of scarlet irritation. "And, yes, obviously. You cannot get her back unless you come back."

Phaethon said carefully, "You do not seem overly concerned at the prospect of (may I phrase it delicately ... ?) of losing me to the real version of you."

Her glittering eyes narrowed with pert, supercilious amusement, and a half-smile touched her lips. Her voice lilted with pretended nonchalance: "Oh... ? You mean the old, scared, outdated version... ? All I can say is: May the best bride win."