No one answered him. There was silence.
7.
Phaethon rode the night wind.
For several minutes, he hung, going whichever way the wind pushed him. Then he floated on his back, looking up at the stars. He activated an internal regulator to slow his time sense, till he could see the movements of the stars as visible, grandly turning in their paths across the sky. Slower still, and the North Star was ringed with concentric haloes as the hours, compressed into a moment or two, hung before him. In a moment, most of the night had passed.
“What if I’ve done something which actually is horrible, unthinkable, or even endangered the Golden Oecumene? Do I really want to know? Curiosity nags me; it whips me on. And yet I did this to myself: the ignorance is self-imposed. Perhaps the alternative is worse.
“Is ignorance so hard to bear, then? There is so very much in life we do not know … .”
Staring up at the night sky, Phaethon opened his hearing to include ground-based and satellite radio. Information from a thousand sources, a hundred thousand, flowed into his brain. There were countless signals and communications radiating from Earth, from the satellite city-ring, the houses of the moon, and green Venus in her new cooler orbit, already shining with the radio noise of civilization. The collected asteroids of the remade planet Demeter had fewer cities, but brighter, as the scientific communities and experimental modes of life there used more energy than sober, older Terra. The Jovian moons, a solar system in miniature, were a beacon of immeasurable energy, life, motion, and noise; some people considered it the real center of the Golden Oecumene. At the Leading and Trailing Trojan points, the million space-metropoli of the Invariants pulsed with calm and steady rhythms. At the edge of night, the Neptunian energy-webs and communication systems extended out to the Oort and Kuiper belts. There were a few distant flickers from remote stations beyond that; one beacon from the Porphyrogen observatory at 500 AUs, like a last spark in the dark.
And then, nothing. The roar of the stars, the whisper of background radiations, was meaningless, like the noise of a storm at sea. Nowhere were there intelligent patterns. There were no other colonies, no outposts. The Silent Oecumene, perhaps, might still exist near Cygnus XI; but, if so, it was a civilization without light or energy or any transmission.
Nothing was in the night. There was only empty noise and empty abyss.
Phaethon restored his time sense and the stars froze in place.
“No,” he said. “I will not be false.”
He recalled that the Neptunian had called the Golden Oecumene a world of illusions. Maybe it was. “But I will not be deceived. I swear it. If there is anything out there in the stars to hear me: you have heard. I have made my vow.”
The stars were pale, and a red rim of light touched the East. He had floated higher than he thought, and, at this altitude, it was nearly daybreak. Now he turned to right himself, and, like a diver plunging into a deep blue, down he fell toward the land below. The winds rushed in his ears like the loud, wild noise of many voices.
8.
In the Palace:
“If this dream is one we can kill, we should kill it, O my Peers,” said, or sang, Ao Aoen, and several voices and images of light flowed from his figure. “Our own self-preservation, and the protection of our beloved Golden Oecumene from the horror of war—a horror only we are old enough to recall—both urge us to the tourney against this archangel of fire whom we so fear that we dare not say his name. Our cause is just; but is our strength equal to the task?
“Convince me, O Peers, that the Hortators will aid rather than oppose our efforts to smother the fire of the soul of man—and my fickle convictions may change again. My empire of dreams can reach into the thoughts and smiles of millions; convince me it can be done, O Helion, that you can wrestle with this spiritual fire as you once tamed the fires of the sun. With—oh, of course!—a happier outcome than that event brought forth!”
9.
Phaethon put in a call to his mansion. “Rhadamanthus! Rhadamanthus! I know the Silver-Gray protocols don’t let you manifest in a way that jars the scenery; but this is an emergency. Something odd happened to me this night; I need your help to find the answers.”
His sensorium signaled to admit a new object. A moment later, out of the high clouds behind him, surrounded with a roaring engine noise, a small black shape darted on wings. It did a snap-roll and came closer, till it paralleled Phaethon’s plunging descent.
It was a penguin wearing bow tie, aviator goggles, and a long white scarf. The penguin’s stubby wings were spread, its bullet head thrown back, its little beak cutting the air. A contrail of vapor issued from its little webbed feet.
“Oh, come now, Rhadamanthus! This blends?!”
The penguin cocked it head. “It is a bird, young master.”
“Realistic images or none at all! That’s the motto of our manor. Penguins do not fly!”
“Hmm. I hate to say it, young master, but neither do young men.”
“But—a contrail—?”
“Ah, sir, you may check my math if you like, but a penguin-shaped object traveling at this speed through this atmosphere—”
Phaethon interrupted. “Be realistic!”
“If the young master would care to look behind himself, I think he will see he has a condensation trail not unlike my own—”
“Good heavens!” Phaethon checked his sense-filter again. The penguin and its contrail were illusions, existing only in mentality. But Phaethon’s contrail was a real object. “How am I doing this? Flying without a suit, I mean.” He checked the properties value on his sense-filter again. It was real.
“If master would care to direct his attention upward, in the extremely high frequency range? …”
“I see a latticework of energy lines across the sky, from horizon to horizon … . A levitation array? But the scale is grandiose. It extends for miles. Ah … hundreds of miles. Was this all built since last night?”
“It was constructed in orbit and lowered into place, young master. A surprise for the guests!” The penguin pointed with a stubby black wing.
He continued: “The wire is buoyant, made of a newly developed material of great tensile strength and high conductivity. The dome extends over the entire Celebration grounds, from the forty-fifth to the fiftieth parallel. If the dome were permitted to relax to its natural hemispheric shape, the apex would be in the stratosphere. It is by no means the largest artificial structure on Earth—the Antarctic Winter Garden is much larger; but it will reduce the expense and trouble of air transport. I deduce the Earth-mind’s Avatar introduced microscopic assemblers into your mannequin-frame—I see traces running from your forehead into your central body—and used them to construct magnetic anchor points and induction generators. A present man could do the same with a heavy jacket of special material.”
“I’m impressed. But you sound sort of nasal, Rhadamanthus, even for a penguin.”
“It saddens me to see a way of life I like pass on, even though I am not myself alive. The new ease of air transport may decrease the advantages of telepresentation, and, over the next four centuries, reduce the prestige of the various manorial and cryptic ways of life. Including mansions like me. Heh. Ironic, isn’t it sir?”
“What’s ironic?”
“That Earthmind should give the technology to you. Not of the levitation array, of course, I just mean the anchor-and-antennae system which allows one to fly with it.”
“Give? Did you say give?”
“Yes. I’ve examined the legal channels, and there is no patent on the hardware, no copyright on the software. I’ve taken the liberty of making out an intellectual property claim in your name, sir, giving you copyright ownership.”
“Do you think She is a testing me to see if I will suppress the technology?”
“Sir, the human mind may not easily grasp the difference between a million and a trillion, but if I have the honor of being able to calculate and correlate a million times faster
than a human brain; and if the Earthmind calculates at a trillion times your rate; then, quite honestly, sir, She is as incomprehensible to me as I must seem, at times, to you. I have not the faintest idea why She does anything.”
10.
The one Peer who had not spoken was an emissary for the Communication and Financial planning subroutine of the Eleemosynary Composition. The Eleemosynary was a group-mind with thousands of members, founded during the turmoils of the Fifth Mental Structure, with memory chains and records reaching back over eighty thousand years. The Eleemosynary Composition was one of the first to include peoples of different nervous system structures into one combination. In the far past, he-they had been a powerful political force, one of the founding architects of the Sixth Mental Structure and the age of the machine-minds. Now, all political power evaporated, the Eleemosynary Composition made his-their fortunes in interpretation and translation and arbitration between different groups and mind-sets in the Golden Oecumene.
The Emissary was embodied and costumed as a figure from Eleemosynary mythopoetry, a winged-lion chimera who wore three heads: monkey, hawk, and serpent. Each head held a separate brain, one of each of the three neuroforms of which the Eleemosynary group-mind was composed: the basic, the Invariant, and the Warlock. (Helion saw that, like Helion, the Emissary viewed the room the other peer’s viewpoints, but, unlike him, he-they did not have any private viewpoint of his-their own. Also unlike him, his-their nervous systems could understand the views coming from Kes Sennec and Wheel-of-Life.)
The Emissary said, “Whomever wishes to serve the Good should embrace long-term as well as short-term considerations into his councils. In less than one hundred billion years, Sol passes to other phases of stellar decay, and no longer will be serviceable. Forethought requires that provision be made to evacuate, but civilization not be jarred or disturbed. Technologies should be developed to accommodate the movement of all worlds and world-habitats elsewhere, social institutions adapted to preserve peace and orderliness, with philosophies to supply ideological justification. Chaos, violence, terror, should be, at all costs, avoided. Only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Humbly, it is wondered if, in the vision presented by Peer Helion, society, by the time star colonization is needed, will have sufficient genius, foresight, and resolve to attempt the abyss between the stars. Stabile societies are not known for these virtues.”
“You see?” said Ao Aoen, “The great Eleemosynary Composition is willing to oppose a society of strict conformity; and he-they are the very soul of union and unselfishness! What does that make us, we who urge the plan?”
“There is, perhaps, misinterpretation,” replied the Emissary, turning his-their three heads to stare at Ao Aoen. “It was meant to say that the star-colonization question should be raised long after Helion’s efforts to extend Sol’s useful lifespan have run their course. If raised before then, conflict and chaos may result. The occupation by colonists of nearby star systems may preclude peaceful evacuation at Sol’s death. Peace is supreme; only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Change one day will be needed and welcomed, when time is complete, and Sol’s power is exhausted. But before that time, what need has peace and contentment to be disturbed by innovators and adventurers?”
11.
In the air, with stars above and cloud below, Phaethon contemplated his meeting with the Earthmind.
“Maybe She’s trying to teach me something, not test me … .”
“I wouldn’t care to speculate, sir.”
“Well. I won’t fail this test at least. Release the information on the public channels. No good can come from trying to hide the truth.”
“So you’ve always said, young master. But I see there is something else, yes?”
“Rhadamanthus—” Phaethon steeled himself. “The things I saw tonight—were real? This all isn’t some part of a masquerade game? I’m not inside some pseudomnesia-play?”
“May I perform a Noetic reading to experience what occurred from your point of view?”
“I don’t keep secrets from you, Rhadamanthus. You don’t need to ask to read my mind.”
“Yes, I do, sir. It’s protocol. And what you thought was real was indeed quite real.”
“The Golden Oecumene is under some sort of attack. And I’m a criminal, or a collaborator, just like my Neptunian friend, helping to destroy our paradise.” Phaethon tasted bitterness like bile in his throat.
“With respect, sir, that conclusion is not warranted by the evidence you’ve seen so far.”
Phaethon spread his arms and stopped his descent. He turned a fierce glare toward the penguin image.
“Oh, come now! I’m not stupid! We have a society of immortals. Our neural technology gives us, when we wish, perfect eidetic memory. Every past wrong, no matter how small, can be recalled many thousands of years after the fact. And there is no place to go to hide from those whom you have offended or who offend you. Here, to prevent even the possibility of crime, we manorials have no privacy, not even in our thoughts, except that which we, out of politeness, extend to each other. And so what else is there to do? I did something—I don’t know what, and frankly, at the moment I don’t care—which shamed and offended my equals. So we all agreed to forget it. Pretend it never happened!”
The penguin stood in midair, long scarf flapping slightly in the breeze, looking at Phaethon through large, round goggles. It rubbed its little white tummy with a stubby wing, and said, “Are you asking me a question, young master? You gave me specific orders not to bring the gap in your memory to your attention; nor can I tell you what you forgot.”
“I did it to myself then? I was not compelled?”
“It was voluntary. We Sophotechs would have acted to stop it, otherwise.”
“And if I countermand the order?”
“Your old memories on my archives back at Rhadamanthus Mansion, in the chamber of memory, in third level of mentality, the deep-layer nonrealistic dreamscape.”
“And should I?”
Even Rhadamanthus could not answer right away. There was a pause as the machine-mind examined every foreseeable future consequence of every possible combination of actions and responses for all the individuals in the Golden Oecumene (Rhadamanthus had mindspace enough to know them all intimately). This complexity was measured against the eternal philosophical dialogue structure the Sophotechs maintained. Rhadmanthus answered:
“It would be nobler and braver of you to know the truth, I think, young sir. But I also should warn you that there would be a cost. One which you yourself, earlier, were not willing to pay.”
“The cost? What is the cost?”
“Look down, sir, and tell me what you see below you here.”
Phaethon looked.
Everywhere was splendor. To the north were open glades, cool secret pools, fragrant hedges, walled arbors, tree-lined lanes, mountains, clefts, murmuring streams falling to a blue sea. East was forest, deep and dark, invested with bioformulations less traditional: weird coral-like growths, fairy-tale energy shapes, luminous bubbles, or strange miles of intertwisting lucent tendril vines. South were palaces, museums, thought-cathedrals, living-pools and amnesia wombs. West was the sea, where, in the light of the newly risen sun, Phaethon saw silhouettes of guests in newly altered bodies like his own, shouting with delight, soaring and diving and dancing in the sky, or plunging from high midair into the waves to rise again in glittering spray.
“There are people there flying like me—!”
“News travels quickly. You did tell me to put the information out. What else do you see?”
Phaethon looked not just with his eyes.
On the surface-level of dreamspace, were a million channels open to conversation, music, emotion display, neural stimulation; deeper interfaces beckoned from beyond, synnoetisms, computer synergetics, library organisms and transintellectualisms no unaugmented brain could comprehend.
Below them, in the center of the Celebration grounds (and in the
“center” also of the mind-space) was the Aurelian Mansion, like a golden flower, with spires and domes shining in the light of dawn, with a hundred thought paths (in mentality) and four great boulevards (in reality) coming together into Aurelian’s city.
“I see Aurelian’s House. What point are you trying to make, Rhadamanthus?”
“The cost. I am showing you what you would lose. The cost of opening those old memories is that you would be thrown out.”
“Thrown out of the Celebration?!” Phaethon was taken aback. Then he was horrified.
He thought about all the work and hopes, all the long years of preparation which he and so many myriad others had put into this effort to make the Celebration a success. Their host, the Aurelian-mind, had been created just for this occasion (even as Argentorium, a thousand years ago, had been created for the last Millennial Ball.)
Aurelian was born by a marriage between the Westmind-group, famed for their audacity, and the Archivist, whose nature was more saturnine. The combination of these qualities had already proven inspiring.
One of Aurelian’s best effects—audacious, almost cruel—had been to invite both past and future to attend. Phaethon had seen paleopsychological reconstructions, brought to life and self-awareness to gaze in awe at the works their descendants had wrought. With them were personalities constructed from Aurelian’s models of many possible futures, inhabitants of fictional worlds set a million or a billion years yet-to-come, strolling with droll smiles amidst what, to them, was past.
Aurelian, at high-compression thinking-speeds, had been studying every possible combination of the guests (and that guest list was large; everyone on Earth had been invited) and all of their possible interactions for 112 years before the January Feast commenced.