“The solar storm? A moral lesson for all of us.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Well, we’d like to think the Sophotechs can predict all coming disasters, warn, and protect us. But in this case, very minor, perhaps subatomic, variations in the solar core conditions caused the forces to escape Helion’s control during one of his agitation runs. Very minor differences between the initial conditions and the predictive model led to disproportionate results; sunspots and solar prominences of truly unusual size and violence erupted all across the affected fields. Joachim Dekasepton Irem has made a rather nice study of the irregular flare patterns, and set the effect to music on channel 880. Have you seen it?”
“I have not,” said Phaethon. He did not explain that his sense-filter, on its present setting, would prevent him from viewing any such thing. “But I am given to understand that he … ah … portrays certain of the details, ahh …”
“Inaccurately?” asked the man.
“Perhaps that’s the word I’m looking for, yes.”
“Well, it’s an understatement! Large segments of Helion’s sun-taming array wrecked! Interplanetary communications disturbed by the sunspot bursts! And Helion, staying behind, still in the depth of the sun, to try to prevent worse disasters! Much of the collection equipment, orbital stations, and other materials near Mercury was saved only because of Helion’s last-ditch effort to restore the magnetic curtains to operation, and to deflect some of the heavier high-speed particles erupting from the sun away from inhabited zones. Great Helion proved his worth a million times and more that hour, I tell you! And to make such a sacrifice for that worthless scion of his house! I wonder at the gall of the Curia! Is there no gratitude left at all in the courts of law? They should just leave Helion alone! But, at least, the Six Peers (well, I suppose they are the Seven Peers now) had the good sense to reward Helion’s valor with a Peerage.”
“His valor? …”
“Helion stayed when the others fled. The Sophotech’s delicate on-board circuitry had broken down; the other members of the Solar crew transmitted their noumenal information, minds and souls and all, out to Mercury Polar Station. Helion did not; the signal time between Mercury and the sun was too far to allow him to guide matters by means of any remote service. Helion rode the star-storm till he broke its back, then transmitted his brain information out at the last minute, despite the static and the garbled signal!
“Helion predicted that control of internal solar conditions would be an absolute necessity for an interplanetary society like ours. The Sophotechs, for all their wisdom, can’t make a way to transmit information from world to world except by radio. They can’t invent another electromagnetic spectrum, now, can they? And, for so long as the Golden Oecumene is connected by electromagnetic signals, we will need to moderate the solar output into a steady, even, and predictable background.
“Who listened to Helion when he first said this, so many thousands of years ago? They all mocked him then.
“Well, they won’t mock now! Whatever happens during the Final Transcendence, I know my segment of the world-soul will pay close attention to what Helion envisions!”
“I feel much the same way,” admitted Phaethon. “Though I have heard that, the same desire to control the uncontrollable which is so to be admired in an Engineer, in Helion’s domestic life, makes him somewhat of a tyrant and a bully.”
“Nonsense! Slander! Great men always have these envious flies and gnat bites to contend with.”
“Even the greatest men can have flaws; even the worse villains can have small virtues. What do you think of Helion’s scion, Phaethon?”
“Ah! You see how this performance is a criticism of his work and life.”
Phaethon blinked toward the boiling lake, the flash and motion of lights beneath the waters. “Some parts of the analogy are more obscure than others … .”
“Not so! Phaethon is madman who plans to destroy us all! Who could not be astonished by the bizarre selfishness of Phaethon’s scheme? Does the Silence teach us nothing?”
Phaethon, utterly mystified, nonetheless nodded sagely. “An interesting point. But some people have said one thing and some have said another. Which part of what he has done do you find to be the most reprehensible?”
“Well, now, I can’t believe the boy really means to do evil—maybe what you say about villains having a good side has some merit here—but he really should not have—Ah! Wait! I think I see friends signaling to me. Yoo-hoo! Over here! Excuse me, it was a pleasure to talk to you, Demontdelune, or whoever you are. My friends and I are Orthomnemocists, and our discipline requires that we neither edit nor replay old memories nor take on new ones; so if we miss the climax of the performance now, we will have no chance to see it. With your permission?”
“Of course. But perhaps you could reveal your true identity, so that we could find each other and talk later; I found your comments most stimulating … .”
“Ah, but this is a masquerade! I might not have been so bold in my opinions if I knew who I was talking to, eh, what?”
The man was hinting that he wanted Phaethon to take off his mask first. Phaethon was loath to do so, for obvious reasons. So, with a sinking sensation in his stomach, Phaethon exchanged meaningless pleasantries with the man, and watched him walk away.
“Damn,” he muttered, and looked down at the libretto card. He expected an explanation and commentary on the ecoperformance. But the card was blank. He had to turn his sense-filter back on to see the symbols and events of Middle Dreaming. Now when he looked at the card it was the same as looking at the costumes of the guests, and an explanation flowed into his brain.
The Cerebelline artist here was trying to demonstrate an example from game-theory mathematics concerning the stability of ecological and economic systems, and the inevitability of conflict.
A criticism of his work? Had Phaethon been involved in some project involving abstract mathematics? Economics? Biotechnology? He could only wonder.
8.
He turned his attention from the libretto, and looked up in time to see the finale of the supertree’s death.
The microforms of that tree, having adapted too well to the complexity of the tree hierarchy, now crumbled into the water. Overspecialized, unable to readapt to the primitive circumstance of the treeless existence, they perished horribly.
Phaethon was mildly puzzled and faintly disgusted by the finale of the sequence. He had expected the central tree to fall, but then to rise again as the forces of evolution compelled a new series of adaptations. And why hadn’t the factors favoring symbiosis within the trees also operated to favor symbiosis, or, at least, cooperation, between the trees? Any two trees that discovered how, despite the desolation between them, to exchange mutually scarce resources would have mutually benefited; such cooperation was common in nature.
Instead, the epilogue of death led to a new sequence of violent events: other tree organisms now began to fling colony-seeds skipping across the boiling lake surface to claim the abandoned center territory; their conflicts grew in wild fury. As each tree became more daring and more bent on success, the heat of its chemical reactions increased. Very, very slowly, the level of the lake water was dropping, boiling away from the very reactions which created short-term success. The life-pebbles near the shore would eventually be exposed, rendered useless, as the water level dropped, which would no doubt lead to additional excesses on the part of the warring trees, producing more waste-heat. The additional waste-heat increased the evaporation of the lake.
Phaethon studied the libretto reading the mathematics, background information, the statements of purpose. Everything was written in such vague terms that there was no guessing what Phaethon’s “work” had been that this was supposed to criticize. On the other hand, the astronomer could have been mistaken, and nothing about Phaethon had been included here at all.
In any case, Phaethon could see no point in the death of the burning trees. It merely struck him as ugly and pess
imistic. If what he had done had been the opposite of this, perhaps he had not been such a bad fellow after all.
He stepped back into Surface Dreaming, to find an image of fat Polonius standing next to him.
“I don’t see anything here worth seeing,” said Phaethon. “And I certainly don’t see what they didn’t want me to see. Whoever ‘they’ are.”
“Define ‘they,’” asked Rhadamanthus, quirking an eyebrow.
“I never would have ‘volunteered’ for memory redactions unless some pressure were brought to bear by someone. That someone is ‘they.’”
“So you no longer think you committed a crime?”
“Why do you pretend you don’t know? You know exactly what happened. So why ask rhetorical questions?”
“Why ask rhetorical questions indeed? But the part of me who talks to you does not know, young sir, nor will I be allowed to know, the substance of the forgotten material, till you know yourself. The other part of me, that part which does know, is not allowed, by any sign or signal, not by a hint, or expression, or even a pregnant pause of silence, to communicate the forbidden knowledge. My orders are clear.” He shrugged. “In the meantime, of course, this version of me can remain on good terms with you, and make such comments as any reasonably intelligent superintelligence could make, eh?”
“So you’re dropping a hint. If there is a signal or a trigger which will tell you if I recover the forbidden memories, there may be triggers to signal other people too, eh? The question is, when are those triggers activated? When I think about going back for my stolen memories? When I talk about it? Let’s see what jumps if I get close.”
“How close, young sir?”
“Let me see the memories. I want to get close enough to smell them.”
“Phrase that as an order, and I have no proper choice but to obey.”
“Open memory archives, please.”
“Come, then, young master, if you are so bold. Step deeper into the mentality. Beyond the Middle Dreaming, even Silver-Gray thoughtspace does not necessarily reflect the analogous real surroundings with perfect accuracy. I can make a short way back to your mansion.”
Phaethon wandered across the lawn and away from the performance. Not far away was a pleasure ground where guests were arriving or activating. A group of Stratospherians had folded their flying prosthetics like umbrellas, and hung them from the branches of a Nexus oak. Gathered at the roots of the oak were several staging pools.
Phaethon stepped and sank into the liquid. Swarms of tiny machines, smaller than pinpoints, gathered around him, drew carbon out of the water, and solidified it into a protective diamond shell.
He seemed to himself to rise again. When he rose, he was in pure dreamscape, his mannequin left behind, among other sleeping forms, all diamond-shelled at the bottom of the pool.
Rhadamanthus bore an expression of unearthly serenity; he gestured with majestic slowness to the East. Among the clouds beyond the edge of the mountain, Phaethon now saw hints of towers and windows rising above the trees. It was strange, but it was not quite a violation of visual continuity.
Phaethon walked. He passed through a stand of trees and found the mansion was much closer than it had first appeared.
At the end of the path was a portico. Columns of gray, dappled marble held up a porch roof shingled with silver plaques; the Rhadamanthine emblem was carved into the entablature. With the sound of a gong, the tall main doors opened.
5
THE CHAMBER OF MEMORIES
Phaethon stood, or seemed to stand, in his Chamber of Memory, a casket of recollection hesitating in his hand. A legend ran in letters of gold across the casket lid:
“Sorrow, great sorrow, and deeds of renown without peer, within me sleep; for truth is here. Truth destroys the worst in man; pleasure destroys the best. If you love truth more than happiness, then open; otherwise, let rest.”
His curiosity grew. Phaethon turned the key, but he did not open the lid.
Fire flashed on the casket lid. Letters as red as blood appeared:
“WARNING! The following contains mnemonic templates that may affect your present personality, persona, or consciousness. Are you sure you wish to proceed? (Remove key to cancel.)”
Phaethon stood for long time without moving, staring out the windows.
Outside, the architecture and every appearance was authentically Victorian English, dating from the era of the Second Mental Structure, or early period Third.
The windows were peaked arches, set with diamond-shaped panes. Framed in the western window rose the mountains of Wales, cherry red and ethereal against the purple dusk, crowned with the light of the setting sun. Phaethon could see, from the windows opposite, a pale full moon rising, dim as a ghost in the twilight, floating in the deep evening blue.
In the dreamspace of the Rhadamanthus Mansion, the sun always set in the West, and there was only one. The moon showed no city lights nor garden glass; but, proper to this period, was still a gray, dead world. Outside the windows, every detail of perspective, proportion, and consistency was correct. Each tree leaf and blade of grass cast its shadow at the proper angle, and the play of light and shadow was just as it should have been. The computer model determining the look and texture and color went down to the molecular level of detail.
If he had gone down to the garden and plucked a single leaf from the rosebushes there, that leaf would still be gone at his next visit; if it blew away on the wind, the computer would simulate its path; if it rotted into the mold, the extra weight and consistency of the soil would be measured and accounted for. This was the realistic accuracy for which the mansions of the Silver-Gray School were famous.
The memory chamber was in deep dreamspace. It was as real, and as unreal, as everything else in Rhadamanthus Mansion.
To be sure, somewhere, in reality, there must have been a real housing for the mansion’s self-aware sophotechnology; a power supply, cables, neural conduits, computer laminae, informata, decision-action boxes, thought nodes, and so on. Somewhere was the real, physical interface machinery that fed carefully controlled patterns of electrons into circuitry actually woven into Phaethon’s real auditory and visual nerves, his hypothalamus, thalamus, and cortex.
And somewhere, presumably, in the real world, was his real body.
His real self. But what was his real self?
Phaethon spoke aloud: “Rhadamanthus, tell me.”
“Sir?”
“Was I a better man … back before?”
The Polonius-shape here was replaced by a Victorian-era butler in a stiff-collared black coat showing a double row of well-polished silver buttons. The butler was red-faced, slightly portly. His chin was clean-shaven, but the handlebar mustache led to enormous muttonchop sideburns, whiskers reaching right and left halfway to his shoulders.
The butler image stood in the doorframe, a white-painted narrow stair curving away behind him, but he did not, or could not, enter the room.
Rhadamanthus spoke in a kindly voice, roughened by a slight Irish brogue. “In many ways, aye, that you were, young master.”
“And was I happier … then? …”
“Indeed you were not.”
“Unhappiness in the golden age? In this pure, unsullied Arcadia? How can this be?”
“You did not think our age so perfect then, young master; and it was something else, not happiness, you sought.”
“What did I seek?” (But he knew. The words on the casket said it. Deeds of renown without peer.)
“You know I cannot say. You yourself gave the order which silences me.” The butler bowed slightly, smiling without mirth, eyes grave. “But the answer lies within the casket you hold.”
Phaethon looked at the words on the lid. He tried to make himself feel doubt. Deeds of renown without peer. In this golden age, there was nothing men could do that machines could not do better. So why did this phrase send a chill of pleasure down his spine?
He looked left and right. On shelves and in glass c
abinets surrounding him were other memories. But the other memory boxes, caskets, and chests in the Archive Chamber surrounding him all were clearly labeled, marked, and dated. They bore no cryptic riddles.
And they carried seals or affidavits from the Rhadamanthus Law-mind to affirm that the redacted memories had been taken from him with his own informed consent, not to escape some legal debt or obligation, nor for some other unworthy purpose. Most of the boxes bore the green seal of memories saved from his thirty centuries of life, edited out from his organic brain merely to save space and prevent senility overload. Others bore the blue seal of a minor oath or voluntary obligation, either thought-work whose copyrights he had sold to another, or else some argument or lover’s spat that he and his wife had both agreed to forget.
None of them dangerous. None of them ominous.
“Rhadamanthus, why does this box not say what is in it?”
He heard footsteps, light and quick, tapping up the stairs behind Rhadamanthus.
He turned just as a dark-haired woman with vivid features stepped past Rhadamanthus and into the room. She was wearing a long black coat with a ruffle of lace at her throat, and in one hand she carried her mask like a lorgnette.
She had eyes of luminous, dancing green, which blazed, perhaps with mirth, perhaps with fear or ire, as she called:
“Phaethon! Drop the box! You don’t know where it’s been!”
Phaethon removed the key, so that the red letters faded, but he kept the box in his hand. “Hello, dear. Who are you supposed to be?”
“Ao Enwir the Delusionist. See?” Throwing back her head, she held open a flap of her coat to display her pinch-waisted vest, spiderwebbed with Warlock signs and studded with responders. The masculine cut of the garment had been rounded somewhat to accommodate her. Only her shoes were feminine; a projection or spike from the heel forced her to walk tiptoed.
“Enwir was a man.”
Her head nodded forward with a sway of hair. “Only when he wrote his Discourses. He arranged the March of Ten Figments as a woman. Are you supposed to be Demontdelune?”