The Phoenix Exultant tga-2 Read online

  Perhaps they suffered from a philosophical conviction that Sophotechnology was evil, and this conviction was so profound, that they committed general and racial suicide rather than admit the existence of the Golden Oecumene. Perhaps they believed that they could survive the interior conditions of a black hole, or escape to another universe, another cosmic cycle, or to an afterlife.

  Phaethon pondered morosely on these things. What did the nightmare mean? Why attack him? What threat was Phaethon to them? Why did they fear his dream?

  Phaethon speculated (and this was merely a guess piled on a guess) whether the authors of this last broadcast, whatever they were, were creatures who did not want to see the rise or the supremacy of the Golden Oecumene, or Golden Oecumene Sophotechnology. If Phaethon sailed the heavens, he would not be the last. They did not want Phaethon's way of life to spread to the stars.

  It was no speculation, however, that some elements of the dead civilization, perhaps machines, perhaps biological, had avoided the mass suicide, and had been overlooked by (or had hidden from) the Golden Oecumene's fly-by probes; for, somehow, some of them had returned in secret to the Golden Oecumene.

  Perhaps they had been here for years. Certainly the Golden Oecumene maintained no watch to guard against such an unheard-of eventuality. And they were the remote descendants of an Earth colony. This would explain how they were able to understand Golden Oecumene systems and technologies well enough to mount an attack on Phaethon.

  But why? Why go to such great lengths? If someone or something had escaped the horror of the mass suicide, why not turn to the Golden Oecumene for help and rescue? Wouldn't they be friends? Unless they were the perpetrators who had arranged the mass suicide; in which case they had cause to fear the remorseless justice of the Earthmind.

  Well, for the sake of argument, assume they had a reason, which seemed valid to them, to go to any lengths to prevent Phaethon's star flight. Assume they are courageous, undaunted, highly intelligent, infinitely patient. Perhaps a form of machine life ... ? This so-called Nothing Sophotech (as Scaramouche had dubbed it)... ?

  Call it that for now. So, then: why hadn't Nothing Sophotech or its operatives attacked again?

  They had failed to strike at Phaethon again either because they lacked the means, or the opportunity. Or because they lacked the motive.

  Did the Silent Ones lack means? It was possible that Phaethon's public denunciations of the external enemy, first at the Hortators' inquest, and then at the Deep Ones' performance at Victoria Lake, had brought public attention enough to discourage the Nothing Sophotech from again striking openly. Perhaps its resources were limited, or were occupied elsewhere. Perhaps Atkins was active on the case, or other Sophotechs were now alert. All these things were possible. Nothing Sophotech might be more than willing to smite Phaethon, but simply be unable to do so.

  Or was it a lack of opportunity? If so ...

  A prickle of fear crawled along Phaethon's neck. There had been no real opportunity to strike Phaethon heretofore. Talaimannar was swarming with constables. But here, below the ocean, in the dark, in the gloom, there perhaps was privacy enough for deadly crime.

  Phaethon, shivering, adjusted the heating elements of his armor-lining to a higher setting. (He fought down the childish regret that Rhadamanthus was not present to help him control his fear levels.)

  Unwilling to move, without getting up, he rolled his eyes left and right. He saw only grit and mud clouds. Oozing dim light showed the limp shadows of some fronds floating high above. Tiny pale organisms flickered back and forth in the sea murk. No supernaturally horrifying attack appeared.

  No; he was being foolish. This area seemed barren only to his weak human eyes. Phaethon was still in the center of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea; the energy-lines and nodes of her widespread consciousness inhabited the many plants and animals, spores and cells all around him. He would have to be much farther away, beyond the reach of any witnesses, before the Nothing Sophotech would dare more. So perhaps Nothing Sophotech was still waiting for an opportunity.

  But most likely, it was motive the enemy now lacked. Phaethon was lost, penniless, and alone. There was no need to strike again. Exile was enough of a defeat to destroy whatever threat Phaethon must have posed.

  What threat? It had to be the ship, of course; the Phoenix Exultant. Now that the identity of the enemy was known, that point, at least, was clear. The Silent Oecumene clearly had the resources and ability to launch at least one expedition to from Cygnus X-l to Sol. For whatever reason (perhaps their well-known hatred of Sophotechnology) they wished for no others to have that ability. They had determined that the one ship capable of crossing the wide abyss to find them would never fly-But, the ship herself still existed. And, since the Neptunians bought out Wheel-of-Life's interest in the matter, title to the ship would pass to them. But to which Neptunians would the title pass? If Diomedes and his faction controlled the great ship, she would fly; if Xenophon and his faction (apparently tools of the Silent Ones), she would not.

  Phaethon gritted his teeth in helpless frustration. Somewhere, out in the darkness far from the Sun, whatever weird and tangled mergings and forkings of personalities and persona-combines ruled the Neptunian politics were deciding the fate of Phaethon's beautiful ship. Meanwhile, Phaethon lay hallucinating atop a ruined house at the bottom of the sea, unable to affect the outcome.

  Hallucinating? There were spots swimming above his eyes. At first he thought that this might be one of the billion swarms of coin-sized disks, black on one side and white on the other, which Old-Woman-of-the-Sea used to absorb or reflect heat from the ocean surface, as part of her weather-control ecology system. But no; he was too deep for that.

  Bubbles. He was seeing a line of bubbles. Glistening, silvery, tumbling, rising, as playful as kittens.

  Phaethon sat up in surprise. Yet there it was. From a small crack near the spiral roof-peak of the prone house, air was welling forth. A pocket of air was still trapped in the house, despite its long tumble.

  Perhaps he was hallucinating. Certainly he was tired. And pawing through the mud along the bottom of the house had an aspect of nightmarish slowness and frustration to it. It took him many minutes to find a working door, since his vision was blurred by clouds, and sweeps of music seemed to ring in his ears.

  It was not until the door swelled open, releasing a vast silver gush of air around him, that he realized he was doing something foolish. But by then, a kick of rushing water had thrown him headlong into the interior, slammed him against the far wall. The precious air was bleeding out.

  He found himself in a constricted space, filled with roaring echoes. He struggled, found the door controls, forced the panel shut. By some miracle, this particular door was strong enough to seal shut, and the rushing water stopped.

  Phaethon looked around with bleary eyes. Up to his chest was a plane of black water. Above this, Phaethon had one curving wall overhead, illuminated by a green web of reflected light. Trapped between was a sandwich of air, filled with sharp echoes. The green light was radiating from one spot beneath the water, across the chamber, near the wreckage of a construction cabinet. And he had not been hallucinating music. Strands of song were issuing, muted and dull, from that one spot of shivering green light below the water.

  Phaethon tested the air, and removed his helmet. Pressure pained his ears. He sloshed through the water toward that trembling spot from which the light came. He did not need a lever to thrust the wreckage of the construction cabinet aside; the motors in his armor joints were sufficient. Then he drew a breath, stooped, groped, and stood.

  Water streamed from the slate he held in his hand, and glowing dragon-signs, ideograms, and cartouches twinkled in the water drops. This was a slate similar to the one Ironjoy had displayed to prove that Phaethon had signed his Pact. Hadn't Ironjoy said he'd left a copy of the document in Phaethon's house?

  And the document was tuned to a music channel; plangent chimes and deep chords of a Fourth-Era Sino-Alaskan T
ea-Ceremony Theme was playing in the Reductionist-Atonal mode. Perhaps the song had been called out of the library by some random water pressure on the manual control pads lining the surface.

  Called out of the library ... ?

  Phaethon began to laugh. Because now his sanity was saved. And his life. And (the plan appeared in his head with swift, soft sudden certainty) his beautiful ship. There would be complexities, difficulties, and at least two alternate plans had to be prepared, depending on which faction was in control of the Neptunian polity. If Diomedes' group had control of the ship, Phaethon might yet be saved. If the ship were in the hands of Xenophon's group, it would certainly be dismantled, unless they were stopped. Was there a way to stop them? Xenophon's group, knowingly or not, were the agents of the Nothing Sophotech, who was certainly intelligent enough to outmaneuver any stratagem Phaethon's unaided brain could fashion.

  Unprepared and inadequate as he might be, Phaethon (now that he knew the identity of his foes) realized that the struggle was no longer his alone. Logically, the Silent Oecumene could not act to stop the Golden Oecumene from expanding to the stars, unless they were prepared to make war on her to stop her. Overt or covert, but war nonetheless. The acts against Phaethon must only be the opening steps in such a war. His burden now was not just to save himself and his dream, but the entire Oecumene as well. He must somehow save, not just his wife and sire and friends, but also the Hortators, and all those who had reviled and harmed him.

  And this, somehow, he must do despite that he had no means to do it and that the very folk he meant to save had placed every obstacle they could in his path.

  No matter. While he lived, he would act.

  But first things first. He only had one slate to work with, but it could give him anonymous access to the mentality. It would be text-only, with no direct linkages to Phaethon's mind or any of his deep structures. Operations that normally took an eye-blink could take weeks, or months. But they could be done.

  Phaethon tapped the slate surface, brought up a menu, identified his stylus, and began to write commands in his flawless, old-fashioned cursive handwriting. He set up an account under the masquerade protocol. But whom to pick? Hamlet, in the old play, had returned unexpectedly to Denmark after being sent toward exile and death in England; the parallel to himself amused him. Very well: Hamlet he would be. A chime of music showed that the false identity was accepted.

  Another command took him into Eleemosynary charity space. As part of the preliminary mental reorganization one needed to undergo in order to join into a mass-mind, an introductory self-consideration was required. The Eleemosynary, always eager for new members, gave away the software as a free sample.

  It would take several hours for the entire self-consideration program to download through the tiny child slate Phaethon held; and at least another hour or two (since he no longer had a secretarial program) to integrate the self-consideration structures into his own architecture. But then he would be sane again.

  And, once he was sane, he could get a good night's sleep and start saving civilization in the morning.

  Phaethon was not idle. While he waited for the self-consideration program to download, he puttered around his broken, dead, drowned house. He found the major thought-boxes and junctions, of an old-fashioned style dating back to the Sixth Era. They were complex, meant to be grown and used as a unit, and Phaethon could see why the simple Afloat folk had let Ironjoy program their houses for them rather than do it themselves. But, like most Sixth-Era equipment, it was structured after recursive mathematic techniques, the so-called holographic style, so that any fragment retained the patterns to regrow the whole.

  While he waited, Phaethon opened the broken thought-boxes, stripped out the corrupt webs and wires, tested the impulse circuits till he found one in working order, made a copy of the circuit from nanomachinery in his suit, and triggered it to repair the other circuits according to that matrix, if they were repairable, or to break down and ingest circuits which were not.

  The work kept his fatigue at bay. Eyes blinking, head swimming, Phaethon kept his hands busy and himself awake.

  There was one unbroken sub-brain in the "basement" (which now formed the stem of his toppled house) which had an uncorrupted copy of the basic house-mind program. He spun a wire out of the reconstituted old circuits, connected it to the broken main, and suddenly Phaethon had twice the memory and computer space at his disposal. Next, a charge from his suit batteries were able to restart the house power generator. Phaethon cheered as light, white light, flamed on all over the house.

  The house-mind had a plumbing routine, which was able to grow an organism of osmotic tissue. Water could be drawn one way through the tissues but not the other. Once it was connected with the capillaries meant to service the thinking-pond and staging pool, Phaethon could unleash pound after pound of absorptive material all across the flooded floors.

  With great satisfaction, Phaethon watched the water level, inch by inch, begin to sink.

  He then wanted to sit down. But it took fifteen minutes to convince the one dry and level surface in the house that it was a floor, and not a wall, and obey Phaethon's command to grow a carpet and mat. The wall kept insisting that, if the floor was no longer "down," then the house must be in zero gee, whereupon it extruded a hammock-net, but not a mat. Phaethon eventually fed it a false signal from the house's gyroscopic sense, to convince it that the house was rotating along its axis and producing centrifugal outward gravity.

  The mat was lovely, patterned with a traditional motif of trefoils and cinquefoils.

  He sat and ordered a cup of tea. But now the kitchen would only produce a spaceman's drinking bulb, which the tea service's heating wand could not enter. It seemed Phaethon would have to sip his tea cold.

  He was about to get up and tear out the kitchen memory for the third time, when the green-glowing slate next to him finally chimed.

  The self-consideration program was ready.

  Phaethon took a sip of cold tea to brace himself, sat in a position called Open Lotus, drew a wire from his slate to the jack on his shoulder board, performed a brief Warlock breathing exercise, and opened his mind.

  There he was, sipping tea from a dainty bulb, seated on a fresh-grown mat woven in the traditional style, with his hypnotic Warlock formulation-rod to one side, and his slate in reading mode on the other, tuned to the proper subchannels and ready with the proper routines, ready to undertake a thorough neural investigation, cleaning, and reconstitution.

  A tea-bulb, a mat, a rod, a brain interface. All the simple and basic necessities of life. He was beginning to feel like a civilized man again.

  Inside his personal thoughtspace, the self-consideration circuit opened up like a flat mirror, glowing with icons and images. It was a matter of a few moments to set the nerve-balancing subroutine into motion. It was the task of about an hour to review his major thought chains and memory indexes since his last full sleep, and to edit out the disproportionate reactions, the shadow memories, and the emotional residue clogging his thoughts.

  Next, a review of command lines in his undermind showed that his subconscious desires, on several occasions, had been interpreted by his implants as commands to alter his blood-chemistry balance; the imbalances had produced subconscious neural tension; the tension had been interpreted as a further command to make additional modifications to his thalamus and hypothalamus, which had in turn affected his perceptions, moods, and memories. And these mood shifts had set in motion additional self-reinforcing cycles. It was a classic case of sleep deprivation. It was a mess.

  Finally, he opened a sub-table and reviewed his emotional indicators. His frustration levels were high, but not disproportionately so, considering his circumstances. His general fear levels, normally below background threshold detection levels, had spread to involve every other area of his thought: every thought; every dream; every shade of emotion. Puzzled, Phaethon engaged an analyzer, and checked the back-linkages.

  He fou
nd that his fear was linked to the thought that he was mortal. His subconscious mind had been profoundly affected by the knowledge that his noumenal backup copies had been ' destroyed. The images and allusions floating in his middle-brain grew morbid, panicked, grotesque. This, combined with the knowledge that Silent Oecumene agents were hunting him, affected his blood chemistry, nerve-rhythm, and the overall sanity of his entire mental environment.

  Fascinating. Phaethon compared his general mental balance against a theoretical index. According to the index, it was not insane, or even unusual, for a mortal man being hunted by enemies to react as Phaethon had done. For example: the index opined that wrestling with Ironjoy had been a normal and understandable reaction to the fear and frustration created by Ironjoy's theft. Why? Because the thought that he was mortal meant that he only had a certain amount of time left in his life. On a subconscious level, it was as if his nerves and blood chemistry had decided that there was no time to waste negotiating with criminals.

  Another file showed Phaethon the thought-images with which his subconscious mind associated his armor: he saw pictures of mighty fortresses, invulnerable castles, mythic knights of the Round Table in shining plate mail. It also showed maternal images of comfort and caring, healing his wounds, feeding him. Then there were emotion-images of loyalty and fidelity; the armor appeared in metaphor as a faithful hunting dog.

  Small wonder he had reacted violently to its loss. Phaethon smiled wryly to see how his subconscious regarded the armor as his fortress, mother, and dog all wrapped up in one. Perhaps he was not as insane as he had thought he was.

  In fact, out of his emotions, there were only two the self-consideration routine tagged as being abnormal. The first, oddly enough, was related to the cacophiles, the ugly monstrosities who had met him after his Curia hearing to praise his victory, and who had tried to intoxicate him with a black card. His level of disgust toward those creatures was very high; there was an abnormal desire not to think about them, to put them out of his mind. An image-box showed a half-melted lump of a body, quivering with tentacles and polyps, wearing Phaethon's face. The subconscious fear that he was somehow like them, no doubt, was what made him not want to think about them. The link chaser displayed lines of red light, to indicate that there were other reasons, deeper and stronger, as to why Phaethon did not want to think about the cacophiles. But Phaethon did not bother to follow those links. He did not want to think about it.