The Phoenix Exultant

THE RESCUE

Phaethon ran up the ladder and found himself on the fore-deck of the barge.

Red light from the fire surged along the northern cliff and lit the scene. Above him, through the pavilion floors of crystal, Phaethon saw black shadows stirring and groaning in the gloom. The workers on the night shift had been jacked out of their work. Perhaps the lines had been interrupted; perhaps Antisemris had shut down the server. The sound of screaming houses brought those figures above to their feet (those that had feet), and cries of anger and fear and wonder mingled with the general clamor.

"Calm! Calm!" Phaethon shouted upward. "It is not our houses burning. Only the empty shells in the graveyard. No one is in danger!"

Drusillet came forward. She was one of the few who had welcomed Phaethon's changes and proudly wore the uniform jacket and skirt he had provided. The shawl she wore to cool her head against the tropic heat, originally designed with a thousand micropores to blow cold oxygen-mix, now also boasted several communication points and phone beads. Compared to the mentality, this small network, encompassing the few hundred yards occupied by the Afloat houses, was pathetic. But her beads and phones demonstrated that one person, at least, had ambition enough to take advantage of the links Phaethon had made among the floating houses.

And it was useful now. "What is the situation?" he asked.

She shouted her answer over the noise, "It's the Hortators. They filed a petition to have the abandoned property destroyed as a public nuisance, submitted a plan for the public burning, and got permission to proceed, all in the last half-second. Energy beamed from stations along the ring-city are triggering the fires. There are constables with inhibitors and pseudo-matter smother fields patrolling the area to prevent the flames from spreading, and, also, Nebuchednezzer Sophotech invented and manufactured some new type of nanomachine cloud which can control the blaze. That's the mist you see coming up out of the water. Either Nebuchadnezzar finessed Old-Woman-of-the-Sea, or else found some nanomanufactur-ing cells she doesn't control."

"Are we in any danger?"

"From fire? No. Our houses are screaming because of their fire alarms. I tried to talk to our houses and shut them up, but I need your command override."

"I don't have an override."

"We don't have a municipal net to coordinate the house-minds. Only the owners have authority to shut off the fire alarm, but most of them don't know how."

"The instructions are written in holographic Standard Aes-tethic icon code along the rims of the inner walls-"

"Most of us can't read."

Phaethon controlled a sense of impatience. "Then shut down power and reset."

"What if the house batteries are programmed to take over during a power out? The routine may have mutated since this morning."

She was right. Phaethon was not certain how to deal with machines that were not smarter than he was.

Drusillet sent a shutdown and restart command nonetheless. The wails and screams of the floating houses died off. Echoes floated for a moment above the waves, and then were gone. The crackling roar of distant fires was the loudest noise now in the area.

Darkness fell across the bay. The houses, bright a moment ago, were now no more than red-lit shadows in the night, as dark and powerless as when Phaethon first had seen them.

"Restart."

"I did. There must be a flaw in the routine."

Just great. "Well, at least we still have light from the house fires yonder," said Phaeton.

At that moment, however, the blaze along the north cliffs changed. The mist from the sea closed around the individual houses, forming a web not unlike silk, pumping pure oxygen into the burning houses. Each house and house stump blazed a silent blue-white, and was instantly consumed. The silk webs smothered any further fire in a matter of moments.

Everything was lit with magnesium-white light for an instant. Phaethon saw the angry, sullen faces of many of his workers standing along the pavilion balconies above him. Some stared north with looks of hate in their eyes. But some, with the same expressions, stared down at him.

Then, darkness rolled over the scene, like sudden blindness.

As the light died, Phaethon thought he saw a crawling, writhing movement along the northern cliffs. He cursed his lack of proper eyesight. But he guessed that the silk bags were altering again to new functions and sterilizing the soil so that seeds blown out from the damaged Afloat houses would no longer take root.

"It's bad," said Drusillet softly.

"They can't destroy any of the house-brains we've already harvested from the graveyard. Those are clearly our property. But the houses were abandoned. They had as much right to burn them down as we did to loot them."

"It's bad. No new house-brains. No new houses."

"The ones we have will last, with proper periodic cleaning and restructure."

Drusillet seemed dubious.

Phaethon asked, "How often do you gather up a new house?"

"About once a week ..."

"A week?!! Those things can last four hundred years!"

"Afloats use houses pretty roughly."

"Don't they maintain their homes, educate the house-minds? Clean them?"

Drusillet looked downcast. "No. Whenever the pantry was bare, or the floor mats got dirty, or the filters were stale, we'd just go chop down a new house. It was an excuse to celebrate."

Phaethon shook his head in disgust and turned away. Eventually he said: "Well, in any case, I'm just sorry I did not think to file some sort of legal claim of adverse possession over the graveyard. I had forgotten how fast Sophotechs think, how fast they can act..."

He was wondering if the Hortators had actually not known where he was until the moment he revealed his location over the public channel, just now, to Bellipotent. If so, then the Hortators clearly had not sent Constable Pursuivant.

If not the Hortators, then who? The Silent Ones? Some third person Phaethon was overlooking? (And whom had Bellipotent conveyed to the island here?)

Pursuivant probably was not from the Silent Ones. It seemed unlikely that, even with a very sophisticated set of virus entities, the Silent Oecumene's agents could so blithely infiltrate the local constabulary without some segment of the Earthmind noticing. And, if they were that powerful, they would have no need whatever to be secretive, since they would have already taken over the entire mentality.

Wait. An intuition told him that there was some flaw here in his logic, some obvious aspect to all these events he was sure he was overlooking. How powerful and how sophisticated was Nothing Sophotech?

But Phaethon was not a Warlock; he could not automatically bring his intuitions forward into his consciousness. The thought slipped away when a group of Afloats come up to the foredeck, and began demanding in loud voices that they be paid for the rest of their interrupted shift.

It was dark, and there was a press of bodies, and Phaethon had to squint to make them out.

The group consisted of a small triplicate-mind (whose three bodies looked like thin, big-eyed waifs,) a loud-voiced neo-morph in a floating box, and two tattoo-faced basics in torn shirts, one a neuter and the other a hermaphrodite.

The basics, rather than wearing Phaethon's uniforms, had doused their upper bodies in smart-paint, so that peacock tails of ever-changing colors blushed across their flesh as tiny cells in the paint flexed to cool their skins, or perhaps (Phaethon thought it more likely) released chemicals into their pores. The perfume from the paint was really quite powerful. Phaethon stepped fastidiously back, holding a scrap of his suit-lining over his nose like a handkerchief.

"I can do nothing for you," he said. "I cannot pay you with seconds of money I do not have. The clients for whom you were working have not yet paid me; nor can they, till we find a black line around whatever block Antisemris put up when he closed up his service."

The three bodies of the triplicate-mind all spoke at once, a spate of interrupted words, and Phaethon regretted yet again that he had no sense-filter to reshape the words into a linear format. "Your problem!" one of them was saying, "We did our part!" The second was saying: "No money? What about that big expense account they gave you to call Neptune?" And the third was archly mentioning that the Hortators had not bothered them until Phaethon's ambitions and high ideals had stirred up the wrath of the Hortators against them.

"We want Ironjoy back!" called one of the basics.

And the other called Phaethon a traitor.

But the neomorph in the floating coffin had a loudspeaker set to drown everyone else out. "On days when we got cut out of the Big Mind, or the services failed, or the lines were cut, it was good old Ironjoy that would declare a time-off party, wasn't it? He'd have dreams by the fistful, and he had a lot of fists, too, and he's pass out wire-points like they were candy. We'd have fluid and beer and happy-jack. For animal parties, we'd have beast-minds jacked in, to shut all those cortex-thoughts away, and just let our underselves and mid-brains come out to romp and play. For sex parties, we'd all link through the thought-shop into some of the rich, ripe, sims and wet dreams Ironjoy keeps on file, not just tame plunging, but real orgies of dirt, with all suppressed naughty under-thoughts read out by the sneak file and blasted back at double sensation! Aye, those were right days! There was fun! There was life! What've we got now, eh? A man named after Phaethon, the rich man's son, the man who thinks he owns the Sun! And what's he going to do for us, to help us survive our last few hours and years alive? Summon parties? Let us drink and stick and dream and jack and joy? No how! No how! He'll dress us up and drive us on and pound and preach and box us in till everything is either his or ours! No more sharing! No more playing fair! What say you all? You want to party? Or you want to listen to a Phaethon look-alike rich man's darling son stand up and preach?"

More and more people had come crowding up on the deck, and filled the stairs, and pushed forward, calling and gesticulating.

And the crowd shouted, "Party! Par-tee! Par-tee!"

Phaethon raised a hand and tried to shout back. "Are you mad? Go home! Rest! We will need to work double shift tomorrow, to make up for what we lost today. Otherwise, how will you eat tomorrow?"

Oshenkyo jumped down from one of the pavilions above and landed neatly atop the hull of the floating coffin. He crouched and put his mouth to the speaking hole, so that his voice was amplified as well. "Big Snoot Gold got plenty to eat, beneath that fancy suit. We all know it! Yummy black, hundred matrix, rich as cream, able to become whatever thing you dream! It's ours, not his; we needs it more!"

Oshenyko wanted Phaethon's black nanomachine lining. A murmur through the crowds showed they all wanted some of it, too.

Phaethon's armor also had amplifiers:

"Idiots! Think about tomorrow! Think about a million tomorrows! I've invited the Neptunians to come and grant you your endless lives again!"

"Tomorrow isn't coming!" shouted the neomorph.

The crowd took up the call. "Tomorrow isn't coming! Tomorrow isn't coming!" And they surged forward to grapple Phaethon's armor.

"Not for you, it isn't," said Phaethon grimly. And he shut his faceplate and made a calculation and sent a low-voltage charge of electricity through the armor's hull. All the hands who were grappling him locked and froze, and everyone pressing forward, each person touching each other in the crowd, passed the charge among them. A noise arose like one Phaethon had never heard before, a gasp of breathless and convulsive agony squeezed from a hundred straining lungs at once.

When he cut the current, everyone dropped to the deck, groaning, twitching. After the press and roar of the crowd, the sudden silence was overwhelming.

Phaethon looked up at a floating constable-wasp. "Once again, you did not help me. Are only those who have wealth and power in this society afforded protection?"

"Apologies. The crowd was only exercising its right of free speech and free assembly, until the moment they laid hands on you. We were gathering units to respond, when you attacked them."

"Attacked? I call it self-defense."

"Perhaps. I notice that not everyone in the crowd was actually touching you; some of them may have been trying to pull people off you. The magistrate has not yet made a ruling. But none of your victims have yet filed a complaint. They all seem to be incapacitated. We will take them to a holding area till they are ready to face trial and punishment."

And with that, dozens of large machines, like flying crabs, swooped down and began picking up the stunned Afloats and spiriting them away.

"Stop! Were are you taking my workforce! I'm going to need them before tomorrow to finish our projects!"

A constable-wasp near his ear said, "For many years, the Afloats, even though they were shunned exiles, never crossed the line to crime. Now, thanks to you, they have. The Golden Oecumene will tolerate no violence. Your other plans will have to wait."

Half the Afloats were gone. The busy flying machines swooped and plucked up more. Soon they were all gone, and the decks were bare.

"When will they be returned to me?"

"I am not obligated to answer that, sir, although I have heard a rumor to the effect that the Hortators are willing to rent them cheap dwellings in Kisumu, near a delirium farm run by Red Eveningstar castoffs. I hear that there is a wide field of pleasure coffins piled up and left to rot among the parks and jungles nearby, with a thousand old dreamsheets and smart-drugs and personality-alterants just lying out on the grass. Some of the Afloats may volunteer to return here for a life of deprivation, hard reality, and hard work. Maybe."

"Then the Hortators have won, haven't they?" whispered Phaethon.

The constable-wasp said, "As to that, sir, I should not venture any personal opinions while in the course of my official duties. But, unofficially, I should warn you against being so quick to take matters so violently into your own hands. Isn't that what got you here in the first place? Good-bye for now. We may be back in the morning, if any of your victims wishes to lodge a complaint."

And then the swarm of constables, which had been constantly overhead ever since Phaethon had arrived, they were also gone.

Below, Phaethon stood facing the mirrors. He attempted Sem-ris and Antisemris first; but their seneschals had been programmed to reject his calls unanswered and unacknowledged.

Then he called Unmoiqhotep, the Cacophile who had so praised him and so adored Phaethon outside the Curia House in the ring-city, just after his hearing. Antisemris (who was also a Cacophile) might help Phaethon if Unmoiqhotep asked.

Phaethon tricked his way past Unmoiqhotep's seneschal by hiding his identity in masquerade. (No Hortator warning appeared to warn Unmoiqhotep's house to reject the call because the Hortators were not able to penetrate the masquerade.) The house accepted to pay for the charges of the call when he announced he wanted to speak "about Phaethon." But when Unmoiqhotep's partial came on-line, the creature reviled Phaethon in no uncertain terms as a fool and a traitor.

"Why do you call him a traitor?" Phaethon asked. (He was getting particularly sick of having that charge leveled against him.)

The partial, like his master, was a bloated fungus, cone-shaped, drooping with nonstandard claws and tentacles. "Phaethon betrayed us! He has failed! We who represent the shining future, we who soar to exulted heights, we who take as implacable foes the dross of the older generation (the already-dead generation, as I like to call them), we have no time in our all-important crusade to trifle with failures! Phaethon has no money now! There is nothing he can do for us!"

Do for us? This reminded Phaethon of the beggar phrase the poor Afloats used to greet any newcomers. How odd to hear it come from the mouths of wealthy men's sons.

Phaethon said: "But there is something you can do for him. If Phaethon had money enough to rent an orbital communications laser, he could contact the Neptunians. They may be willing to hire him as a pilot for the Phoenix Exultant. Instead of being dismantled for scrap, the starship could be sent out to the stars, there to create new worlds."

The image of the Cacophile flopped its tendrils first one way, then the other. "What has that to do with us? Phaethon wants to fly to the stars. He wants to make worlds. I want to find a new wire-point to jolt my pleasure centers, maybe with an overload pornographic pseudomnesia to give it background. Are his dreams any better than mine?"

Phaethon reminded himself that he was here begging for money. He attempted to remain polite. "With all due respect, sir, may I point out that if you help him now, Phaethon, when he achieves his dream, can create such worlds as will be pleasing to you, and your lifelong dream of escaping from the domination of the elder generation will be achieved as well. But if you, instead, burn your brain cells with a wire-point, this serves neither you, nor him."

The partial dripped liquid from three orifices. "But what does all your blather and bother do for us right now? Right this instant? Phaethon is no longer in fashion among us now. After he is dead, perhaps then we will exalt him as a martyr, slain by the cruelty of the elder generation. Yes! There is something for us! But Phaethon alive, still striving after his sick, insane dream? Still hoping to accomplish it? No, oh no. He would be our worst enemy if he succeeded at his attempt, against such odds. Isn't it obvious why? Because he would make the rest of us look so bad."

Phaethon felt mildly sick with astonishment. The Cacophi-les had no intention of ever "escaping" from the "domination" of the older generation. All their moral posturing was merely excuse to disguise their lust to own what they had not earned. To fly to other worlds, and there make lives and civilizations for themselves, would require the kind of work and effort which the Cacophiles disdained.

And what about their alleged gratitude for Phaethon, the high honor and esteem in which they had promised to hold him? But gratitude and honor required hard work as well.

Phaethon signed off with polite words.

That left Notor-Kotok. But the squat little cylindrical cyberform was of as little help.

"I have not, at this time, money or currency enough to rent an orbital communications laser, or any device of similar function, capable of reaching that Neptunian station (to the best of my knowledge) presently nearest, nor of reaching any other relay or service able to convey a message thereto. This statement is based on an estimation that the money involved would be 'enormous,' and by enormous, I mean, sufficient to buy separately each part and service which the 'legitimate' services (by which I mean those who adhere to Hortator standards) presently appear to have decided not to traffick with us, as we are now."

(Phaethon hated speaking to Invariants, or to people, like Notor, who followed Invariant speech conventions. He dearly wished he had his sense-filter back again, so that he could program it to edit out all the cautious disclaimers and lawyerly redundancy with which Invariants peppered their speech.)

Phaethon said: "Could some of your deviants be willing to lend me money on credit? I cannot raise any capital now that my workforce is under arrest."

In a complex speech, Notor explained something Phaethon already knew. Most deviants are deviant because they are poor. Most poor are poor because they lack the self-discipline necessary to forgo immediate gratification. They were not the kind of people able to lend money and wait for a return.

Phaethon asked: "What if the return on investment is not simply immense, but infinite?" "Define your terms."

"Infinite means infinite. It does not matter how much money I need to borrow, or what the rate of interest is. I will gladly promise to repay one hundred times what I borrow, or one thousand. Have you forgotten the Silent Oecuemene? If any of their energy-producing structures are still intact, or can be restored, then I can make Cygnus X-l my first port of call. From their singularity fountainheads, whatever amount of energy I need to repay my creditors can be gathered."

"I am receiving a signal from other sections of my brain-work. Wait. We calculate that no one will be willing to risk any money on your venture, no matter what the rate of return. Several deviant money houses, those who I might have suspected would lend to you nonetheless, have already been purchased, within the last few seconds, by Nebuchednezzar Sophotech..."

Someone was listening in on this channel, perhaps, or Nebuchednezzar was alert enough to calculate Phaethon's next maneuver, and, at lightning speed, had already moved to thwart him.

Notor explained: "Also, my service provider, who maintains these connections I presently use to speak with you, has signaled me and told me that, unless I no longer speak with you, the Eleemosynary Composition will dump shares of communications stock to artificially drive down the prices, and ruin his business. He is not willing to risk it, and threatens to suspend service if I do not eschew you.

"The other Afloats whom I am tasked to attempt to protect, may be relocated," continued Notor. "I anticipate that I will require my service provider's communication lines if I am to continue that protection; therefore, if, in fact, maintaining my connections with you, and continuing that protection, are mutually exclusive, I must place a higher priority on the latter."

"Can we still communicate by letter?" asked Phaethon with little hope.

"Who would carry it? Who would translate it from your written format? I cannot read your archaic Silver-Grey letters and signs."

"Then I am defeated?"

"You terminology is inexact. 'Defeat' as a concept, refers to a complex of emotion-energy reactions created by a mind interpreting the universe. But the universe, by definition, must always be more complex than the information-parts or thoughts one uses to encode that complexity. 'Defeat' is not a fact, it is an assessment of facts, and may be subject to interpretation."

Perhaps that was meant to cheer him.

The signal shut off, with an icon showing that further service would be discontinued. The mirrors went black, and would not light up again.

Phaethon walked slowly back up on deck. He stood at the prow with one foot on the rail, leaning on his knee and staring out across the water. What options still were open to him? Had he been defeated at every turn?

And yet things were not as bad as they had been even two days ago, when he had been choking at the bottom of the sea. Now, he had allies. Weak ones, perhaps, like Antisemris, or ones with whom he could not speak, like Notor-Kotok, or like the distant Neptunians. But he also had a dream, and it was a strong dream. Strong enough, perhaps, to make up for the weaknesses of his allies.

The offer Phaethon had made to Notor-Kotok was one manifestation of the strength of that dream. The endless energy supplies of the singularity at Cygnus X-l, as well as the wealth of multiple worlds yet to be born, would tempt investment and support from among those disenfranchised or dissatisfied with the present Oecumene. Immortality had not changed the laws of economics, but it had created a situation where men now could contemplate, as economically feasible, long voyages, long projects, and plans patient beyond all measure of time for their fruition. Somewhere would be men willing to invest hi Phaethon's dream, willing to trust that millennia or billennia from now, Phaethon could amply reward their faith in him. Somewhere, somehow, he would find people who would support him.

He raised his head and looked. The stars were dim here, washed out by lights and power satellites around the ring-city, the flares from nearby mining asteroids in high-earth orbit. And his eyes were not as strong as they had been, blind to all but human wavelengths. But he could still see the stars.

Cygnus X-l itself was not visible. The almanac in his head (the one artificial augment he would never erase) told him the latitude and right ascension of that body. He turned his eyes to the constellation of the Swan, and spoke aloud into the general night. "You've manipulated the Hortators to suppress me, strip me, revile me, exile me. But you cannot stop me, or move me one inch from my fixed purpose, unless you send someone to kill me.

"But you dare not perform a murder here in the middle of the Golden Oecumene, do you? Even in the most deserted places, there are still many eyes to see, many minds to understand, the evidence of murder."

He paused in his soliloquy to realize that, indeed, there could be spies and monitors listening to him, watching him, including instruments sent by his enemy.

He spoke again: "Nothing Sophotech, Silent Ones, Scaramouche, or however you are called, you may exceed me greatly in power and force of intellect, and may have weapons and forces at your command beyond anything my unaided thought can understand. But you cower and hide, as if afraid, possessed by fear and hate and other ills unknown to sane and righteous men. My mind may be less than yours, but it is, at least, at peace."

He was not expecting a reply. It was probably more likely that no one was watching him, and that his enemy had lost sight of where he was. He doubted there were any enemies within the reach of his voice.

There was, on the other hand, still one ally with whom he could speak, not far away.

He drew out the child's slate he had, and, with a short-range plug, connected to the shop-mind and employed the old translator he had found earlier. He engaged the circuit and transcribed: "I address the Cerebelline called Daughter-of-the-Sea and send greetings and good wishes. Dear Miss, it is with grave regret that I inform you that our period of mutual business and mutual aid, so lately begun, has drawn abruptly to a close. The Hortators (or, rather, Nebuchadnezzar Sophotech, acting at their behest) have manipulated events to deprive us of the Afloat workforce. I am unable to fulfill my contract with you concerning the bird-tending, weeding, microgenesis, and other simple tasks you wished to have done ..."

He went on to describe the situation in some detail. He explained his plan to introduce Neptunian forms among the Afloats, to generate capital, so that he could afford to persuade the Neptunians to hire him as pilot for the Phoenix Exultant. He knew the poverty-stricken Neptunians, without aid, probably did not have the money necessary even to ship the Phoenix Exultant from Mercury Equilateral to the outer system.

He concluded: "... Therefore the only salvation for which I can hope must come from you. Not truly an exile yourself, it is possible Antisemris and his deviant customers will treat with you, and be willing to carry messages from you to the Neptunian Duma. Only if contact with my friend Diomedes, and with the newly founded Silver-Grey houses among the Neptunians, is established and maintained, can the Phaethon Stellar Exploration Effort be resurrected. Can you carry these messages and offers to them for me?"

The slate encoded the messages as a series of chemical signals and pheromones. Phaethon drew out a few grams of his black suit-lining, and imprinted the nanomachinery substance with those signals. He threw that scrap into the water.

A moment later a small night bird (belonging to Daughter-of-the-Sea, he hoped) pecked at the scrap, swallowed it, and flew off.

Gram by gram, his nanomachinery was vanishing. He could not suppress a twinge of regret as he watched the little bird fly off.

He settled himself to wait. Daughter-of-the-Sea, a Cerebelline, did not have a unified structure of consciousness. The various parts of the mental networks that served her as cortex, midbrain, and hindbrain were scattered among three acres of bush and weed and wiring, pharmicon groves, insect swarms, and bird flocks. Not every part communicated with every other by the same medium or at the same time rates. A thought coded as electricity might take a microsecond to travel from one side of the underbrush root system to another, a thought coded chemically, or as growth geometries, might take hours, or years.

Phaethon wondered why anyone would volunteer to have such a disorganized and tardy consciousness. But then again, the Invariants and Tachystructuralists no doubt wondered the same thing about Phaethon's clumsy, slow, organic, multilev-eled, and all-too-human brain.

And so it was with considerable surprise that Phaethon saw his slate light up with a reply before even half an hour had gone by. Daughter-of-the-Sea must have reconstructed part of her consciousness, or assigned a special flock of thought carriers, to maintain near-standard time rates just for his sake, in case he should call. He was touched.

The reply was radiating in the form of inaudible pulses from a group of medical bushes and vines clinging to the southern cliff shore.

The translation ran: "Anguish is always greater than the words we use to capture it. Can I attempt to express my soul unblamed? What are your thoughts but little lights, glinting in through all the stained-glass panes of words, burning in the loneliness of your one skull? And you would have me cast such light as that toward eyes of blind Neptunians. Where is coin enough to burn within the Pharos of such high desire, that I might make a bonfire even giants envy, and cast so bright a beam across so wide a night? And to what end? Success shall gather Phaethon to heaven, to struggle with silent monsters in the wide star-interrupted dark; or failure pull down Phaethon into a lonely pauper's tomb beneath some nameless stone. In either fate, bright Phaethon departs, all his fire lost, to leave me, Daughter-of-the-Sea, again in misery and solitude on this frail, saccharine, spiritless, thin-winded, green-toned world I so despise."

Phaethon frowned. Struggle with silent monsters in the dark? Did Daughter-of-the-Sea expect Phaethon to conduct some sort of war with whatever had been left of the Second Oecumene? Perhaps these "silent monsters" were a metaphor for the various forces of inanimate nature with which any engineer must struggle as he builds. No matter. One could not expect to understand everything even people of one's own neuroform meant to say.

But he understood the thrust of the message. Daughter-of-the-Sea wanted to know what was in the deal for her.

Phaethon had the translator cast his reply in the same florid mood and metaphor as hers: "I will create for you, out of some rock or cometary mass circling Deneb or far Arcturus, a world to be the bridegroom of your delight. All shall be as your desires say. The angry clouds of long-lost Venus shall boil again with the drench of stinking sulfur in that far world's atmosphere, and never need you breathe this thin and listless air of Earth again. Tumultuous volcano-scapes shall flood a trembling surface, immense as any laughter of a god within your ears, and once more shall you watch as hurricanes of acid pour in flame from ponderous black skies of poison into reeking seas of molten tin. You will be embodied such as you once were on Venus, Venus as she was so long ago! And veneric organs and adaptions (which find no other place or purpose, old Venus lost) now shall bloom from you again, to yield to you those hot, strange, powerful sensations, unknown to any Earthlike eyes, those sensual impressions that your memories so faintly echo. Come! Aid me now! And once the Phoenix Exultant is mine again, she shall nest within the circle of the Galaxy, and brood, as her young, a thousand shining worlds."

It was the same offer he had made Notor-Kotok. Chemical codes appeared on the translation screen, and again he took up another precious gram of his limited nanomaterial, impregnated the message into it, and dropped it into the waters.

A night bird gobbled it.

It was Greater Midnight when Phaethon went belowdecks to perform his evening oblations. This included a feeding hardly worthy of the name "mensal performance" (he merely slapped nutrients into his cloak-lining, and let the cloak feed him intravenously). Next, he underwent a careful and very spartan sleep cycle. Finally, he did an exercise of adjustment to his neurochemistry, which he encompassed in a ceremony called "Answering the Circle." This ceremony dated from the early Fourth Era, and had originally been used to restore weary members of vast group-minds to their proper health and courage and purpose.

It was hours later, in the dead of night, near Lesser Midnight (as Jovian Midnight was called) when Phaethon emerged on deck again. The slate showed a response from Daughter-of-the-Sea had arrived, this time, from another center of her consciousness housed in filtration grasses somewhat inland of here. The slate was not complex enough to tell him if this part of her mind was analogous to a "conscious" level, or if this was a subconscious reaction, something like a dream. "Poor- seed-scatter-answer-dark/masked/approaching-bright promises sowed-accept-a world to keep you gently chained? Now comes one."

He ran two other reconstructions through the translator, attempting other modes. The parts of the message unfolded and were interpreted into a coherent format: "Lacking wealth or prestige, lacking funds or friends enough to buy or beg what media Phaethon requires to communicate to his remote Neptunians, Daughter-of-the-Sea this night emanates your message out through several modes. By land and sea and sky it spreads, by light, by speech, by printed letters such as are known no more, save among the far-past-loving Silver-Grey. Each message, scattered like a thousand wanton seeds, recites the promise of rewards to come to whoever might carry it one further step along. In your name, I promised them each gram devoted to your cause would be returned a hundredfold, and any exile ostracized on your behalf would be given a world of his own. Surely uncounted hundreds of these messages were simply consumed by silence, seeds spread on rocky soil.

"But an answer came from one who wears a mask, protected, during the festival, from the eyes of the Hortators. This masked one accepts your offer, and says you will be taken from this place, and carried into the infinite silent wilderness of space, where you will have no one but your solitary love to protect you, never to be seen again. This masked one promised you shall create a world which shall keep you, bound there with gentle chains, and that you not travel so very far into the mysteries of outer space as your ambition dreams.

"Now comes this one."

Phaethon stared at the words. Was this masked one Scaramouche? Some prankster who had logged on to answer, hidden by masquerade from the retaliation of the Hortators? Or perhaps a dream or fantasy invented by some non-literal segment of Daughter-of-the-Sea's scattered consciousness?

In any case, the words seemed ominous. His armor had been left below; Phaethon wondered if he should go down and put it on.

On the other hand, the battery power of the suit was not infinite...

Then he heard the noise of motion in the water not far away.

In the dim light he could see an awkward shape moving through the water with plunging energetic splashes. It was hard to see, in the gloom, the body-form of the creature. It seemed two-headed, many-legged. Or perhaps it was a slim manlike shape astride a larger swimming shape.

There was a clatter as the creature or creatures came up against the hull. Then a high-pitched whinny, and more clatter, pounding noises, as they climbed from the water to the floating stairs of the gangway. Whoever or whatever it was was out of sight below the curve of the hull.

"Ahoy! Hello!" came a voice. "Permission to come aboard!"

Phaethon stiffened. He recognized that voice.

Then came a rushed, huge hammering of some large beast pounding up the gangway stairs.

Phaethon turned, voiceless and numb with astonishment.

The tall shadow of a horse came plunging over the gangway stairs, water flying from its mane and tail. Clinging low over its neck, head down, jacket flying, was a slender form in archaic riding habit. Black hair swirled around her head.

She laughed in joy, and the horse reared and pawed the air, perhaps in annoyance, perhaps in triumph.

With a smooth movement, the slender form dismounted, and walked lightly over to where Phaethon stood wondering.

She tapped her riding crop against her tall black boots. She ran her fingers through the silken mass of her hair. "I lost my hat," she said. And then, stepping close: "Aren't you going to kiss me?"

There, in the dim light of the stars, beneath the diamond pavilion canopies, was Daphne, smiling. She wore a long dark jacket, laced at the throat, and skintight pale riding breeches.

"Daphne-" He tried to remind himself that this was the doll-wife, the copy, and he told himself that the sudden emotion that flooded him made no sense, no sense at all.

"Daphne-in exile? How long have you been ostracized?"

"Since about a second ago, when I said hello." She smiled an impish smile.

"But-why? Your life is ruined now!" His voice rang hollow with horror.

"Silly boy. I've come to rescue you. Aren't you going to kiss me? I'm not going to ask you again."

It made no sense. It made no sense at all. This was not really the woman he had fallen in love with, was it? Why had she ruined her life to be with him?

He took her in his arms. He bent his lips to hers.

Suddenly, it made perfect sense.

On the deck of the barge in the gloom, Phaethon and Daphne stood in each other's arms. Her stallion was quiet, standing near the stern, his nose moving among the crystal panels of the pavilions overhead.

In the east, like a rainbow of steel, the lower third of the ring-city shone with moon-colored arch-light, silver at the horizon, shading to a golden rose-red in the heights. This was the reflection of a sunrise still hours away, light and reddened, bent by the atmosphere and cast against the orbiting walls and sails of the city, to shine down again on parts of the world still embraced by night. That great curve of light was reflected again to form a rippling trail across the waters, like a road, beyond the horizon, to heaven, and reflected once again, from the ripples, to play against Daphne's cheek and gleam in her dark eyes. Phaethon, looking into those eyes, wondered at how many twists and reflections of sunlight, arch-light, and sea-glimmer were required to make the light in his wife's eyes dance. Yet it was still light from the sun.

His wife's eyes? No. Exact copies, perhaps. But the woman wearing them was nonetheless not his wife. The light in her eyes ultimately came from the sun; but it was not sunlight.

The thoughts and memories ultimately came from the real Daphne; but this was not Daphne.

This ex-doll, this sweet girl whom he did not love, had embraced exile, and perhaps death. Why? To be with him? Because she thought herself to be in love with him?

The sense that things made sense, so strong just a moment before, was crumbling.

"Why are you here, really?" The words came out stiffly.

Suddenly, their embrace was mere awkwardness, the unwanted intimacy of two strangers.

Daphne stepped away from him. Her head was turned so that he could not see her eyes. She spoke in a voice brittle and impersonal: "I've had my ring organize and write the beginning of the story of how I got here. I'm coming out with a sequel to your saga. After so many years of not having anything to do, now I have it! I thought you would be pleased-you're always nagging me about how I should take up a vocation again."

A sequel? Evidently she referred to the heroic dream-documentary she had written when they first had met, the thing that had made her first send her ambassador-doll to go interview him on Oberon. A doll had been sent because she had been afraid to travel outside the mentality range, outside of the range of her noumenal immortality circuits. Afraid of exile; afraid of death.

He reached out, took her gently by the shoulders, and stared down into her face. No. This here was the doll, or, rather, the emancipated woman who had once been that doll. The memory that she had written that first documentary was an implant from the Prime Daphne (but since Prime Daphne's talents and ability to write had been implanted as well, did that make any difference?)

Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, but her face was calm. Her love for Phaethon was an implant as well, a false memory. The enormity of the sacrifice she had made by coming here stirred up the pity and kindness she saw in his face. Kindness, but not love.

(But he had started his fall in love with Daphne when he met this doll. Met this Daphne. Did it really make a difference?)

He said sadly, "No one will read it. We're both trapped outside now."

She just smiled. "I don't have my communion diary with me, so you'll have to read about my adventures as multitext. You have an experiencer built into your armor? It'll be quicker than telling you."

Against his wishes, a small, faint smile of pride tugged at his mouth. "I have everything built into my armor. Let us go below."