The Phoenix Exultant

THE FIRE

It was amazing how quickly things changed. By the time Phaethon in his armor emerged in an explosion of steam from the surface of the sea and arced down to the deck of Ironjoy's thought-shop, the Afloats were already jacked out of the mind-system, fired from their jobs, had begun to riot, and now lay stunned and numbed under the diligent immobilizer prongs of darting constable-wasps.

Ironjoy was standing at the square bow of the barge, arms folded and arms akimbo, staring down at the water in a brooding posture. The Curia had already conducted his trial over the mentality, at a high-speed time rate.

The constables had been allowed to serve a warrant to investigate Phaethon's allegations. Evidence was taken from Ironjoy's memory before he was able to induce autoamnesia, not just of one petty crime, but of so many, that Phaethon's testimony had not been required at the trial.

Most people arrested by the constables merely had their accounts in the mentality locked down, and then were asked to come to the places of punishment at their own time and convenience.

Ironjoy was sentenced to suffer six seconds of direct stimulation of the pain center of his brain, two hours of a remorse emotion fed into his thalamus, and, in simulation, to suffer the lives of his victims from their points of view, in order to learn the sorrow he had caused. Since he had cheated many, many Ashores and many more Afloats, he would be in simulation for a long time. Hours, perhaps weeks. It was the longest period of penal service Phaethon could bring to memory.

Phaethon stepped forward. "What will happen to your business, Ironjoy, if you are kept incarcerated for several weeks?"

Ironjoy's voice radiated from his chest. The tones were harsh and flat. "You know very well. An unmodified man can survive for three days, perhaps four, without water. He can fast for longer than that, if he is in good health. But none of my people are in good health. The Afloats will starve in a month without me to feed them. You have done a great service for the Hortators this day! You have destroyed us."

In the Victorian Age (which Phaethon knew well from Silver-Grey simulations) starving people could commit crimes in order to be kept in jails, and fed at public expense. That option was not open to these poor Afloats, since pain-shock, not incarceration, was the preferred penalty imposed by Curia justice. Ironjoy's sentence was an exception. Perhaps the Hortators had somehow influenced the judgment.

Phaethon said, "Give me your thought-shop, rent-free, during the time you are away."

Ironjpy's insect-face twitched, a spasm of hatred. "How dare you suggest such a thing? It is you who turned me in."

"I turned you in just for this purpose. To get you out of the way and take control of your shop. You know I am the only one with the ability to operate it."

"I have a thought-set in my shop that can render me utterly immune to pity. The Invariants make it. Once I load that set, I could watch all of these people of mine die in lingering hunger and pain without a twitch. And you would not be able to blackmail me into giving my shop to you to save them."

Blackmail? Or simple justice? Phaethon was not inclined to argue the point. The idea that Ironjoy had some compassion for his flock of victims was new to Phaethon; he had been expecting Ironjoy to submit in order to save his wretched business and his position as monopolist and slavedriver.

Phaethon said nothing. He merely waited. The logic of events was clear.

Ironjoy's double shoulders slumped with defeat. "Very well," he said. With no further ado Ironjoy told Phaethon the secret names and command-codes for the thought-shop, and they both signed a contract which would turn the shop and stock back over to Ironjoy on the date of his release from penal service.

Then Ironjoy began to instruct Phaethon in his schedule of prices and fees.

Phaethon held up his hand. "Don't bother. I intend to set my own policy."

Ironjoy regarded him without friendliness. With no further word, Ironjoy stepped from the barge down a gangway to a waiting coracle, and, with a paddle in each arm, rowed his way to the nearest staging pool ashore, that same dank shallow pool where Phaethon had first met Oshenkyo. Here Ironjoy, encased in diamond, would serve his sentence.

It took only two days for hunger, thirst for beer, and the withdrawals from various addictions to drive the angry Afloats back to work at the thought-shop.

At first, Phaethon interviewed them, one after another, and combed through Ironjoy's psychology files on them. They were not a prepossessing lot. In fact, more than once Phaethon learned more of their pasts than he would have liked. Less than a single afternoon passed before he ceased to ask in his interviews anything other than the most businesslike and impersonal questions-the filth and wreckage of their lives, he decided, were none of his concern. He only needed to know what work they were suited to do.

They were not suited for all that much.

The Afloats were a sullen, angry crew, and they did their work with as little effort as possible, and stole, sabotaged, and erased Phaethon's property so often, that soon each one had a constable wasp continuously overhead.

Phaethon did not mind or care. He had spent those two days reviewing and indexing the stock of the thought-shop, rewriting the more ungainly programs, and reconnecting the various scattered chains of thought floating in the barge's disorganized shop-mind. The more disgusting of the dreams, pornographic, morbid, or filled with bloodlust, he erased; others he sold off on the market, to Ironjoy's deviant and back-net customers. With that money he bought a new core for the shop-mind, raised the capacity, and hired a five-minute engineering-student program to redesign his search engine for job-hunting.

On the third day, Phaethon stood in the bow of the ship and announced his new policies to the huddled and sullen mass of Afloats who stood glowering at him (those who had eyes) or snapping their sensor-housings open and shut with loud snaps (those that did not.)

"Ladies and gentlemen, neutraloids, bimorphs, hermaphrodites, gynomorphs, and paragenders. Your lack of immortality does not excuse you from the duty of living well what few decades or centuries you have left to you. Accordingly, I hope to introduce some of the discipline of the Silver-Grey into this little community. Naturally, participation will be voluntary. But those who do participate will be granted special price reductions, bargains, and rebates on a wide variety of thought-shop effectuators.

"Self-delusion will be sharply discouraged, as will intoxication, rage dreams, and out-of-context pleasure stimulants. This shop will not help you alter or abolish your self-identity, but will provide every routine at my disposal to allow you to improve your self-love, self-discipline, and self-esteem. Educational and philosophical programs will be made available at low rentals, as will transitional addictives leading to nonad-dictives, to help you cure yourself of psychiatric zero-sum cycles. All gambling outlets will be shut down to encourage you to save and to invest. Let me describe some of the Silver-Grey disciplines and their benefits ..."

But he was pelted by garbage at that point and had to discontinue. He stepped back and drew a diamond pavilion flap across him like a shield, and used a slow-time routine to note who threw what, so that he could dock wages later.

It was Oshenkyo, in the forefront, who was urging the others on. He shouted toward Phaethon: "Clammy snoffer! You're just a Hortator now! Tell us do this, don't do that, read this, don't smoke that, think this, don't zing that! We zing what we ken! Do as we please! Free men! If we want to jolly up our brains on identics, no business of yours!"

And the others cried: "Hortator! Hortator!"

Phaethon let the disturbance run its course.

After some more drama, more threats and exchanges, Phaethon continued his speech:

"Fellow exiles! You have given up on hope. I have not. This makes it inconvenient for me, since I need your labor to help me accumulate the funds I need to put forward the next part of my plan. I need that labor to be alert, unintoxicated, voluntary. The type of automatic half-brain work that Ironjoy's drugs and sets permitted you to do will prove insufficient for my needs. Therefore, your lives, education, and earning abilities will have to be improved. No doubt this will cause you dismay. I care not. If you dislike my managerial style, feel free to find employment elsewhere. But first hear me out:

"There are rich amounts of thought-work the non-controlled market will bear, as well as entire areas of limited-creative patterning and editorial functions for which there is always a need. But, beyond this, there is an area none of you have explored, even though you have the tools at hand. There is work in scientific and technical fields. There is work in investment, small operations, data migration, context-cleaning, mentality rest spaces. Humble work, but honest! What about pseudo-gastronomies? Everyone stops for false-meals when they work, and the Hortators cannot police the public thought-ways or deviant dark channels! Why can't you own your own businesses, gather your own thought-shops, invest your own capital?

"This is some of the easiest training to acquire; all of it is in the public domain, and such training fits every standard jack and neuroform. It is true that the Sophotechs can perform any of these operations more swiftly and more efficiently than can we. But it is also true that they cannot do everything at once, at every place at once, as cheaply as everyone wishes. There is always someone somewhere who wants some further things done, some further work accomplished. There is always someone willing to pay much less for work moderately less well done. Why can't we be the ones to find and do that work?"

The first shift Phaethon sent to completing some of the assembly line-type tasks, mostly data-patterning and link-cleaning, which Ironjoy's old markets still needed done. That was much as before.

But a second group he sent to harvest some clothing he had bargained with Daughter-of-the-Sea to produce for them. Like her mother, she cared nothing for the Hortators. Phaethon, the day before, had found a translation routine buried in Ironjoy's back-files that would allow a human neuroform to communicate with the Daughter's odd mind arrangement and time frequency. She was more than happy to provide the community with some much-needed sturdy clothing, as well as certain Pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs, in return for some simple bird-tending, weeding, and microbiogenisis her bodies needed. And, most of all, the Daughter wanted the many imploring advertisements which had been sent by many donors and suitors to engage her attention to be sent away. As it turned out, she was weary of them.

Now, the Afloats would be dressed better even than the Ashores, and in garb both clean and dignified. Surely it would improve their esteem, mold their slovenly demeanor to better forms! Phaethon wondered why not one of these Afloats had spent any time trying to communicate with Daughter-of-the-Sea before.

A third group, under his direction, was sent ashore to the graveyard of houses. This was not a party of festival-goers, not a simple house-felling operation. Instead, Phaethon conducted a survey, found every house-brain and brain seedling, and sent the group to restoring, cleaning, regrowing, and rewiring. He estimated that, with these brains linked in parallel, by the end of two days, the thought-shop would have the brain capacity of a Rhadamanthus outbuilding, enough to give every Afloat personal help at job-hunting, as well as being able to take over some of the more routine tasks of such jobs.

This would also give each Afloat the ability to log on to the mentality (if they could find a server who would accept them) and send messages to Ironjoy's markets without going through Ironjoy.

Again, he wondered why none of them had thought of it before.

A fourth group he sent to cleaning the rust off the barge. This he did, not because it helped forward any scheme, but only because the hull was dirty and unsightly.

The final group, consisting only of boxlike neomorphs, swam along the strands of connection fiber and old nerve wires that shrouded the many floating houses like so much cobweb. With mechanical grapples from the robotoolboxes on their prows, they spliced together and gathered up rolls of the material. And they grumbled every second of their task, complaining to each other in sharp, time-compressed subsonic bursts, but Phaethon expected them to find enough wasted fiber to allow him to wire the entire floating community for light, power, speech, and text. The actual work of physically stringing wires from house to house could be done by the spider-gloves in a matter of hours.

And, gloating in his secret thought, Phaethon expected that these last two improvements together, if any of the Afloats were clever enough, would allow someone else here to set up a search engine and a thought-shop of his own, and break Ironjoy's monopoly forever. Did they dislike Phaethon's stiff insistence on punctuality, proper dress, sobriety? All the better. The more unpopular Phaethon was, the quicker some other Afloat would be to go into the business and draw away his customers.

At sunset, Phaethon had a little ceremony. Everyone who was not working the night shift was on the deck of the barge when he pointed toward the darkened houses all around them. He made the restart gesture.

And light flared from every window, lamps flamed, beams glittering across the water. It was a breathtaking sight.

In chorus, the houses all spoke at once, "Welcome, masters and mistresses! We slept; now we wake. It will be our pleasure to serve you!" And, at Phaethon's cue, in hushed, huge voices, which rolled across the water, the houses in choir began to sing the ceremonial housewarming song from the Fourth Era.

It was a sight to expand the heart. Phaethon felt a tear of pride in his eye, and smiled in mild embarrassment as he wiped it away. He looked up and saw, in the distance, peering warily over the cliff, a group of silent Ashores, half-nude, or garish in their advertisement smocks, drawn by the echoes of the song. They stood as if amazed by the lights.

Phaethon smiled, and turned. Behind him stood the Afloats, handsome in new jackets and trousers of brown and dark brown, tunics, skirts and films of white or green. And yet why did so many of them slouch, or knot their shirttails, or stain their skirts? Why did none of them smile? Phaethon had been expecting them to cheer. Didn't they want their houses to be lit?

With a brusque gesture, Phaethon dismissed the day shift, cautioning them to appear sober for work the next day. Then he strode down the ladder to the cabin in the aft of the barge, which had been Ironjoy's sanctum and restoration chamber.

Several days had gone by; it was time for the next step of his plan.

Ironjoy's restoration chamber was barren except for a cot, a formulation rod, an ewer of life-water and an aspect mandala tuned to nearby thoughtspace, obviously meant to watch for Sophotech or Hortator calls and police activity. Ironjoy certainly did not coddle himself; these quarters were more stark than most of his employees'. Perhaps the pleasure of dominion and control, a pleasure now so rare in the Golden Oecumene, was enough to sustain him.

A housecoat programmed with a score of medical functions hung from a rack, with a dozen medical history files stacked in coin slots along the vest; Ironjoy evidently used it to cure some of the older Afloats. Phaethon frowned to see a euthanasia needle clipped to the housecoat belt in a sterile holder.

Two walls of the cabin were fixed. Opposite the door were narrow windows looking out upon the bay and the cliffs beyond. The other two walls were not smart-walls, but they knew a few words, and they could slide open.

Behind one was a Demeterine decorative screen of surprising elegance and taste, a pattern of gold birds and dark blue Demeter-style fruit. Sound threads were woven through the panel, but Phaethon did not have a reader to receive the signal, and so the threads gave a few puzzled chirps and woodwind notes when he looked at various parts of the design, but then, unable to follow the pattern of his eye movements, the threads fell into puzzled silence.

It was a magnificent work. Phaethon did not know enough about this particular form to guess the artist's name, but Phaethon wondered again about Ironjoy's character. Who would have guessed that such a meditative and abstract delicacy attracted him?

Behind the other wall, facing the blue-gold decoration, were three talking mirrors. They must have been tuned to place their calls as soon as light hit them. The moment the walls slid back, the mirrors formed images of Ironjoy's three main customers.

He was not unprepared. Phaethon stood straight in his armor, with the magnificent decoration panel forming his backdrop. He spoke briefly, introducing himself and explaining the change of circumstance. "I intended to fulfill all of Ironjoy's contracts with you to the letter-the work performed today will testify to that. It is my hope that you will consent to deal with me on the same basis you dealt with him. It is only until his release a few weeks hence. What do you gentlemen say? Do we have an understanding?"

Each of the three spoke for a moment, describing the work they might need over the next few days, asking questions, and issuing tentative consent. Each one seemed to be aware that if he mistrusted Phaethon, or refused to deal with him, the other two would rush in to fill the gap.

An identification gesture had brought their names to the surface of the mirrors in a subscript. The indigo-faced man on the left was Semris; the writhing mass of bloated snakes in the middle was a neomorph named Antisemris; a tube with mechanical arms with emblems of a half-Invariant was labeled Notor-Kotok. Semris, to judge from the name, was a Jovian, perhaps from Io. Antisemris was evidently an undermind or child of Semris, but who had joined the Cacophile movement.

The Ionians came from what had once been a wild and dangerous world, and some small few had not put away their wild and dangerous personas after that moon's volcanisms were tamed by planetary engineers (Including the famous Geaius Score Stormcloud of Dark Grey, a terraformer whose work Phaethon had studied, followed, and admired.) If Semris was one of those few last Wild-Ionians, he would ignore the Hortators; they had long ago condemned his mental template as destructive and temperamental.

Likewise, Antisemris was a freak, perhaps a Nevernext, and Hortators' standards would mean little to him. Both were the type of unsavory people, perhaps insane, whom Phaethon would never have received or entertained, back when he had been a Silver-Grey Manorial.

Notor-Kotok was a different case; he spoke somewhat like an Invariant, somewhat like a Composition. Phaethon suspected that he, or they, were actually a small combination-mind made of people whose relatives and friends had been exiled, and who had all contributed a few thoughts to make a composite being that would still look after their relatives, talk to them, or find them work. The being was modeled along unemotional Invariant lines, perhaps to render it immune from Hortator pressure. Phaethon had heard of such things before.

Phaethon said, "You gentlemen will be pleased to note that I intend to make improvements to the working conditions here. This will no doubt increase productivity. The greatest loss to productivity is to false-self dreams and deep intoxicants. I believe the Afloats are driven to these things out of despair for their relatively short life spans."

Antisemris fluttered several of his snake-heads. "Too true! Yet what can be done? Orpheus controls all noumenal recordings."

"Gentlemen, it is well-known that the Neptunian Tritonic Composition can store brain information within the laminae of their special material. At near absolute zero temperatures, there is no signal degradation, even over centuries. With cascade-sequence re-recording and corrections, the Neptunian superconductive nerve tissue can retain a given personality for aeons. I recommend we create a branch of the Neptunian school right here. The Neptunians scoff at Hortators' mandates; we will find no difficulties finding Neptunians willing to deal with us. And, once that is done, whole new markets will open to us. We will no longer need interpreters or Eleemosynary routines to communicate with the Neptunian neuroforms. And you know those outer markets are hungry for even simple thought-work."

"Your proposal?" asked Semris.

"Gentlemen, I ask for your investment. An initial fund of some sixty-five hundred seconds should allow us to buy a channel of communication, if not with Triton or Nereid, then at least with the Neptunian Legate-mass stationed near Trailing Trojan city-swarm, where they keep a permanent embassy. A modified search engine could examine Neptunian thought-space for work opportunities; we will have labor, cheap and plentiful. I estimate we can make our return on the investment in a matter of days."

Semris said, "A new market is always attractive; but I have dealt with Neptunians before, the group who did work on Amalthea. They are tricky and unlovable, and enjoy cruel jokes. Ironjoy was always against the idea of opening markets with the Neptunians."

Some snake-heads of Antisemris stared at each other in puzzlement. "Neptunians are also very far afield! Think just of how long it would take to broadcast across the radius of the Solar System to ask a query or get a response from Neptune. Telepresentation is impossible; second-by-second oversight of the work is impossible."

Phaethon said, "The distance is not an obstacle for piecework done in large blocks, especially high-quality work with low data densities. I hope to train the Afloats to be able to work without supervision."

Antisemris was unconvinced: "Why stir up so many changes? We are all satisfied with the way things have gone heretofore. The Afloats have nowhere else to go; change may confound things! Why irk the Hortators more than we must? We subsist only because they do not have the patience to squash us all. No, for once, the flat-headed Semris, no doubt by accident, has uttered a truth."

But Notor said, "I place a high priority on keeping the mental well-being of the various Afloats at an optimal or praedo-optimal level, as measured by the Kessic sanity scale. Increased life would be beneficial, as would increased markets. Yet I have curiosity about Phaethon's motives. Your plan to find work in the Neptunian markets does seem disproportional to the desired effect."

"Yet, Mr. Notor, you do not object to dealing with Neptunians in and of themselves?"

"Allow me to employ a metaphor. I will accept any coin that burns." (This was a reference to the antimatter currency.)

Phaethon heard some warbling bird notes from the tapestry behind him. Perhaps one of the men in the mirror had glanced at the gold-and-blue figures, and his eye motions had been interpreted to reveal his emotional state. Phaethon now realized for what purpose the crass Ironjoy kept such beautiful art. And while Phaethon was not familiar with the note codes and tuning of the emotion-reactives woven in the tapestry, he could make a good guess.

Hiding a smile, Phaethon now bowed to Semris and Antisemris. "If you gentlemen are not interested after all, perhaps you can allow Mr. Notor and I a little privacy to discuss some matters of mutual interest and mutual profit..."

Semris and Antisemris interrupted each other, suddenly eager to discuss the matter further.

Less than an hour later, Phaethon had the money he needed to place a call to the Neptunians.

Phaethon folded the wall over two of the mirrors, used Ironjoy's formulation rod to calm himself and fix his purposes in mind. Then he turned to the mirror and placed the call.

In their present orbital positions, it took sixteen minutes for the signal to go to and to return from near-Jovian space, where the Neptunians maintained a permanent legate. This delay, Phaethon had expected.

But then, while Phaethon stood idle, doing nothing, there passed another five minutes while the messenger speech-tree loaded from the signal into the limited mind-space of the thought-shop's isolated communication circuits.

There was a further half-minute delay as line checkers and counteractants and virus hunters examined the received messenger speech-tree for viruses or surprises, a precaution not usually necessary, except when dealing with Neptunians.

The delay of time was considerable. Phaethon reflected that Rhadamanthus could have performed a million first-order operations in this same amount of time, or Westmind, a hundred million. Almost six minutes had passed. The true depth of his poverty impressed itself on Phaethon. He was living like some creature out of a forgotten age of history, practically like a Third-Era Victorian in truth.

How had those ancient British folk, or Second-Era Romans or Athenians (so prominently pictured in Silver-Grey Simulations) tolerated all the mess, delay, and anguish in their lives? How had they faced the inevitability of death, disease, injustice, grief, and pain? How had they tolerated the loneliness of being frozen in the base neuroform, without even the possibility of joining a mass-mind?

And how had they changed and improved their minds and selves without the benefit of noetics, noumenology, redaction, or any science of psychiatric editing or self-consideration? Had it just been by an effort of will and the practice of a habit of virtue?

The symbol of the Tritonic Neurofrom Composure scholum appeared on the mirror, indicating that the messenger was loaded and awake. Phaethon drew a breath, mentally recited his formulated Warlock autohypnotic mantra one last time, and steeled himself. Had he just been marveling at the stoicism of the mortal men of earlier ages? He himself was now mortal. And it was his stoicism which would now be tested.

"Good afternoon," said Phaethon. When that produced no response (he still was not used to the lack of a translator to convey his meaning into other formats and aesthetics) he said, "Start. Go. Initiate. Begin. Read Message. Please."

"This is the messenger. I represent information from the presently dominant sects and discourses embraced by the Tritonic Neuroform Composition. If your question or provocation is one which has been anticipated by my writers (if I have writers), then a recorded response will be brought forward to reply. The lector is flexible, and can organize and edit the responses according to the logic of your statements, if it so chooses. If your question is one which has not been anticipated, expect a spate of nonsense and irrelevancy. On the other hand, if I am, in fact, a self-aware entity, then my responses are not merely the recorded statements of the writers, but the freely chosen deliberate communication of a mind having a perverse joke at your expense. (Please note that, if I am a self-aware entity, then erasing me from your communication buffer would be an act of murder. Constables may be standing by.)"

Phaethon blinked in puzzlement. This was hardly what he had been expecting. "Pardon me, but are you in fact a self-aware entity?"

"I have been programmed to say that I am."

Phaethon checked the memory space the messenger-tree occupied. It was large. Large enough to hold a self-referencing (and therefore self-aware) program? Unlikely, but with proper data-compression techniques, it was not impossible. It would be a reckless act to erase what might be self-aware. But then again, it would be typical Neptunian humor to absorb large sections of expensive memory with an unintelligent messenger-tree no one dared erase.

The messenger said, "And please do not attempt to place the burden of proving my humanity on me. The law against first-degree murder does not hold that those who cannot prove their humanity are subject to instant and arbitrary death."

The joke seemed particularly cruel to Phaethon, since he himself, by pursuing this call, might be exposing himself to instant and arbitrary death. What if the agents of the Silent Ones were listening?

"Can you give me a precis of who is presently in charge of, or wields the most prestigious and influence in, the Neptunian Duma?" The "Duma" was the Neptunian name for their main social organization. It was made of partial minds and client minds beamed in by Neptunians, who were too scattered to represent themselves by any direct means. The partials combined and evolved in a seething, tangled mass of vigorous conflict, to form a consensus entity, or, rather, successive sets of consensus entities, whose proclamations influenced the course of Neptunian dialogue and society. The Duma was more like a clearinghouse and central marketplace of ideas rather than like a parliament.

Neptunians were highly individualistic and eccentric, and so they instructed their representatives to place a higher value on obdurate zeal than on rational compromise. Consequently, the Duma was often insane, pursuing several contradictory goals at once, overreacting or underreacting with no sense of proportion to the petitions, ideas, and new lines of thought that the Neptunians, from time to time, introduced. The Neptunians had never yet reprogrammed the Duma to behave with logic; this baroque form of social government apparently amused the Cold Dukes and Eremites of Neptune far more than a rational one would have.

The messenger-tree said: "The Silver-Grey School has recently won wide acceptance among the Duma. It is presently the dominant school, followed, but not closely, by the Patient Chaos School."

Phaethon leaned forward, eyes wide. "The Silver-Grey? How is this possible?" As far as Phaethon knew, there had never been any Silver-Grey among the mad things of Neptune.

The messenger-tree continued: "Many thought-chains and dialogues within the Duma are consumed with topics prompted by Diomedes of Nereid, who recently shamed the Hortators of Earth, and who, by being poor, tricked them into giving him great wealth. Diomedes and Xenophon mingled to create out of themselves a temporary mind named Neoptolemous, who outwitted the Cerebelline named Wheel-of-Life. Neoptolemous now owns the titanic starship called Phoenix Exultant. Trillions of tons of metallic antihydrogen, chrysad-mantium, biological and nanobiological material, are aboard, and the shipmind is a million-cycle entity with a vast wealth in routines and capacity. This victory brought great prestige to Diomedes and to his son Neoptolemous. Diomedes, in his Living Will, set aside a fund of that prestige to promote a Silver-Grey School among the Duma. He did this in memorial for a friend of his, who was unjustly treated by the College of Hortators, and sent to his death in exile."

"May I send a message to Diomedes? Can you speak on his behalf?"

"I have templates from most of the major chains of thought among the active Duma members, including Diomedes, and therefore I can pretend to be him and form responses based on my anticipation of what he would say if he were here. When this message is transmitted back to the Neptunian embassy, Diomedes will have the option either to reject or accept the representations made as his own. If he should accept, this messenger will be implanted into his own memories, so that he will thereafter believe he himself was here and made these comments. However, I am required to warn you that Diomedes, as of last assembly, no longer existed as a separate entity. He was still a part of the Diomedes partial-composition. The actors for Diomedes and Xenophon fell into dispute over which parts of Neoptolemous belonged to Diomedes and which belonged to Xenophon. Neoptolemous' thoughts have not yet been untangled and resolved back into two separate entities. In other words, Neoptolemous has not yet made up his minds."

"What is the basis for the dispute? Is it the ship?"

"The Patient Chaoticists are eager to dismantle the ship and distribute the wealth among the starving hosts beyond Neptune; the Silver-Grey urge the ship be used for an expedition to establish colonies at nearby stars. The Patient Chaos plan would bring money into the starved Neptunian economy; whereas to fund an expedition such as the one which Half-Neoptolemous Semi-Diomedes proposes would drain the economy. Didactions from Patient Chaos assert that the present ruination of the economy was caused, in large part, by investments made into Phaethon's Expeditionary Effort."

At that point, he was interrupted by a chime. The wall-panel to the left slid back to reveal the image of the nest-of-snakes face of Antisemris. "Pardon me for interrupting, but, as a major investor who just entrusted you with a good deal of money, I was just wondering why you were wasting my investment chatting with a Neptunian machine about politics. We bought you this messenger so you could read the help-wanted advertisements it carries! And don't bother to tell me that you were investigating their market needs. All you need to know is what kind of grunt-work of line-checking they need done; its not as if their internal politics affects the kind of short-markets we are looking for!"

Phaethon said sharply: "Your intrusion is most unwarranted and perhaps illegal. Is this the fashion in which you have chosen to display the fact that you are spying on me? Do not bother to answer. Our mutual association will soon end."

"Hah! Climb off your fat pride! Semris and Notor will not deal with you either, once they find out how you spend our money!"

"I have dealt with Neptunians before, and you have not. They also use their messenger to update their negotiation databases. Because you have rudely chosen to interrupt, rather than to consult with me privately later, the messenger, who overhears all we are saying now, has no doubt classified our needs and our bargaining position. This has limited our options considerably, and prejudiced our future dealings with the Neptunians. If you cannot be polite, sir, then at least be quiet, before you harm your interests and my own more than you have so far done."

Antisemris uttered a dozen notes of hissing laughter. "Don't try to wax me with that polish! Keep talking to your Nepto friend. But I'm not transmitting him back to the embassy. As of this moment, you are cut off from the funds and line to the orbital radio-laser we established."

"You have no such authority, not without the concurrence of Semris and Notor. I, of course, need their concurrence to exclude you from all future business dealings, but I do not think I shall have any difficulty convincing them, once they see the end-result of the conversation you so foolishly interrupted."

Antisemris writhed, several heads opening their mouths and displaying their fangs. "Ho ho. Go ahead. Finish your little conversation and earn a million grams. Surprise me."

Phaethon turned back to the center screen. "Messenger! I assume the major expense to your proposed interstellar expedition is the Neptunian lack of skilled technical personnel."

"Correct. The Hortators have forbidden any Inner Planet libraries from selling us the templates or mind-sets we need for terraformers, paraluminal astronomers, high-energy physicists, or Celeritologists. We have no pilot. Furthermore, the ship interfaces were designed for a base neuroform, and are not proper for Neptunian crewmen, who have different neural architecture, thought conventions, and time regulations. The ship's interfaces would have to be changed, one routine at a time, and in some cases, one line at a time, before the ship would be comfortable for a Neptunian crew. Without a So-photech, this would require long amounts of tedious effort, which we cannot expend. Therefore, without expert help, we cannot fly the ship at the intended velocities for which she was designed. This, of course, is the major flaw in the proposed plan Diomedes had put forward."

"What if I could get you cheap labor to do your interface translation to the Neptunian formats?"

"With proper interfaces, then Neptunian minds and personae could be stored in the crew segments of the shipmind, and smart-habitats be programmed to sustain any somatic forms the crew would care to manifest. However, the ship's flight characteristics, mass, and length, will considerably transform (according to external frames of reference) as she approaches light-speed. The external universe (from the ship's frame of reference) will undergo like transformation. This will affect any objects and particles aboard (such as communications and sensory circuits) that must interact with the external universe, including drive by-products and foreign-object-damage controls. It would require a special branch of tachyceleric study to rediscover the findings of the original designer. That information does not seem to have been stored in the ship's brain. We cannot provide the information."

"I have that information."

"Then the formatting can be accomplished and a Neptunian crew be recorded. But such formatting would be a pointless exercise without a trained operator to run the celestial navigation, xeno-terraforming, and high-energy physics routines."

"I can pilot the ship. I have test-flown her."

"I am required to warn you that, even though I am only a message-tree, and am not capable of independent judgment, this conversation may be reviewed by a living operator at a later time. That operator will condemn falsehoods and irrational statements, and that will serve to negate any bargain made with me."

"Why do you call my statement false?"

"Only one man has ever test-flown that ship."

"I am that man."

"That man was Phaethon of Rhadamanth, the ship's designer."

"I am Phaethon."

There was a choked hiss from Antisemris (whose presence Phaethon had almost forgotten.) Phaethon did not have the aestethic to read snake expressions, and therefore did not know what emotion or sign this knotted jerk was meant to convey. Surprise? Perhaps.

The snaky mass of Antisemris said, "You are the one Un-moiqhotep told us all to worship! You are that Phaethon! The real Phaethon!"

Phaethon said blankly: "But I told you my name. Surely you knew ..."

"Zs-ss! A lot of my school have memorized ourselves to be Phaethon, or changed our names! When I saw you in that stupid-looking armor, I just thought you were freak-looped, like my brothers and others, or maybe got ostracized because you tried to contact the real Phaethon, or something."

Of course. Antisemris must be under a Hortator ban, if not as strict as Phaethon's, at least something that would keep him out of polite society, and perhaps away from the mentality. Phaethon was still not used to the idea that exiles and outsiders, like himself and Antisemris, could not discover the identities, or confirm the thoughts and intentions of the people with whom they spoke. It must lead to a great deal of confusion and dishonesty. No wonder Antisemris had been so quick to spy, to interrupt, and to accuse.

Phaethon said, "Does this mean you will help me maintain communication with the Neptunians after all?"

Antisemris said, "Why not? How can anyone stop us?"

To the messenger, Phaethon said, "I wish to find employment as pilot aboard the Phoenix Exultant. I believe my qualifications are unique. I also have a large group of workers able to run the standardized routines to translate all interfaces to Neptunian formats. Will the Duma be willing to employ me and my workers?"

"The question of the ownership of the Phoenix Exultant is not yet settled. This messenger has only limited ability to predict the outcomes of events; yet I would venture that your appearance at this time with such an offer will sway the major lines of thought among the Duma to favor the Silver-Grey plan, and award Diomedes the title. If so, we could hire you and your workers at salaries considerably higher than standard. But could you guarantee the quality of the work? Afloat exiles are notoriously poor workers."

"I believe that this is caused by the grim and hopeless character of their circumstances. That character may change if some or all of the Afloats transfer their brain-information into Neptunian housings. I would ask your people to bear the expense of this metempsychosis, on the grounds that it is the only way to acquaint workers intimately with the transitions and translations to the Neptunian mental architecture. I would also ask that you bear the expense of transporting me to the present location of the Phoenix Exultant."

"I have little doubt but that my principals will favorably receive your offer."

"And are you, in fact, an intelligent being?"

"I have been programmed to reply that I am."

"In that case I will turn the retransmission command over to you, and ask you to risk suicide by broadcasting yourself out of my communication buffer and back to your embassy. This way, I will not be held to account under Golden Oecu-mene law."

The emblem of the messenger issued a closing salute and disappeared from the central mirror.

In the left mirror, Antisemris' many snake-heads were bobbing, perhaps a sign of good humor. "Well, well. The real Phaethon! Fancy that. It sounds like you'll be at the helm of your ship in no time. And who can stop you, eh?"

The wall slid open to the right, and an image of three armored vulture-heads appeared in the mirror there. A harsh battle-cyborg voice issued from the speaker. "Phaethon! This is the remnant of the Bellipotent Composition speaking. I am informed that someone has just read my travel records, no doubt to discover your location. An index check shows the action took place at million-cycle thought speeds, which indicated that the intruder was using Sophotechnology of a high degree of sophistication. A side-thought of mine is even now communicating with the constabulary. A Constable Pursuivant, on their staff, is reviewing the evidence and tells me that the constables can do nothing, on the grounds that the reading of my information was legal. Apparently the movements of former customers whom I transport are not covered by my clause of privacy, and therefore there is a legal loophole which allows former customers to check flight plans and safety records, even those for flights which they did not take."

Phaethon said: "I have to warn you that Constable Pursuivant is a fictional character. I was told by the Preceptrix of the local commandry that that name and persona can be loaded by anyone who wishes to donate time to performing public service as a constable. The persona comes complete with memory and training."

"I take it that there are no security checks to prevent the persona from being ran by any random citizen?"

Phaethon said: "Why bother?"

"Point taken. Society is certainly much more peaceful and trusting than when I was young. Does this mean I cannot trust what Pursuivant told me?"

"I'm not sure. I was visited by a Constable Pursuivant myself. The local Commandry told me that there is no record of such a visit."

The vulture-heads said, "And you suspect it is your fictional extra-systemic alien race?"

"It is the Silent Oecumene."

Both Antisemris and the battle-cyborg jerked their heads in surprise. It was a human gesture, despite their inhuman heads, some atavism of their core neural structure. Deep down, they were still both human.

The three vulture-faces snapped their hooked bills with a clattering sound. "The Silent Oecumene is dead."

"Many people say the same about the Bellipotent Composition."

"Are you telling me they came back from the dead and jumped out of a black hole just to thumb through my logbooks? If so, why isn't the constabulary answering questions about what happened? Why haven't they woken up Atkins out of archive storage?"

"Atkins is not in storage. I've seen him."

"Ah! Ach! If Atkins walks the earth once more, battle and death are not far away!"

Phaethon stared at the red vulture-eyes. Did this creature want a war? The sensation of human sympathy he had for the cyborg faded.

Antisemris evidently wanted to be part of the conversation. He said, "You there, bird-head! You people are talking crazy-talk. This is some masquerade prank. The Hortators wouldn't let this happen."

"They are not all-powerful," replied Bellipotent.

"Someone read your logs," Phaethon said, "there must be a record. What did a normal identification show, when you queried the intruder?"

"The intruder's query was masked by the masquerade protocol. The intruder logged on under a pseudonym."

"What name did they use?"

"Yours. They called themselves Phaethon of Rhadamanth."

Phaethon squinted and frowned. Here was a puzzle. Why his name? "Was that done to allow him access to your records? I had been transported by you, after all."

"Not officially. I listed you as a stowaway."

"But this loophole in the law would not apply to someone who merely dressed up as a customer, only to someone who actually was a customer. So, unless there is a Deep One hunting for me ..."

"I did have someone I brought to your location. A human form, not a Deep One."

"Here? To Talaimannar? Who?"

But Bellipotent said, "You should not have announced your position. This is not a secure line."

Antisemris' snakes all jerked to one side. His screen went black, to be replaced by a text of white letters on the dark field.

SORRY, PHAETHON, BUT THEY WERE WILLING TO OFFER ME SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND SECONDS AND LET ME BACK IN, PROVIDED I STOPPED HELPING YOU. I'M NOT TAKING ANY MORE MESSAGES FROM YOU, SO DON'T TRY TO CALL.

Phaethon could not grasp what was happening. Was Antisemris confessing to helping the Silent Ones? No, absurd. Some sort of super-high-speed conversation must have just taken place between the Hortators and Antisemris, who had been bribed by them to withdraw support from Phaethon. His link to the Neptunians was cut off again ...

At the same time, the windows to Phaethon's right lit up with flame.

Then he heard an explosion.

Phaethon jumped to the windows and stared out.

Atop the cliffs across the bay, he could see part of the graveyard of houses, where he had just been salvaging, that morning. It was all on fire.

For a moment, he thought he saw a figure, man-shaped, flying, camouflaged in black armor against the black sky. Then it dropped into the burning graveyard, and, with a flash, buried itself into the cliffside beneath the graveyard.

While Phaethon was still blinking and trying to decide what it was that he had seen, another explosion trembled through the gaunt seashell silhouettes of the dead and defective houses. Fire gushing from high windows, the tall thin silhouettes began to sway and fall.

Then, that noise was smothered, as all the houses Phaethon had just brought to life, all the floating houses of the Afloats, in one huge, terrible wail, began to scream.