John C. Wright - Golden Age 2 - The Phoenix Exultant

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Books by John C. Wright

The Golden Age

The Phoenix Exultant

The Golden Transcendence

THE

PHOEHIX EXULTAHT

Book Two of The Golden Age Or, Dispossessed in Utopia

JOHN C.WRIGHT

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Wright

thereof, in any form.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, IXC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-765-34354-1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002073280

First edition: May 2003

First mass market edition: October 2003

Printed in the United States of America 0987654321

MAJOR CHARACTERS, GROUPED BY NERVOUS SYSTEM FORMATION (NEUROFORM):

Biochemical Self-Aware Entities: Immortals:

Base neuroform:

PHAETHON PRIME of RHADAMANTH, Silver-Grey Manorial school.

HELION RELIC of RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's sire, founder of the Silver-Grey

Manorial school, and a Peer.

DAPHNE TERCIUS SEMI-RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's wife.

TEMER SIXTH LACEDAIMON, Dark Grey Manorial school, an Advocate.

GANNIS HUNDRED-MIND GANNIS, Synergistic-Synnoint school, a Peer.

ATKINS VINGT-ET-UN GENERAL-ISSUE, a soldier.

UNGANNIS, daughter of GANNIS, also called UNMOIQHOTEP QUATRO NEOMORPH of the

Cthonnic school, of the Nevernext movement, whom Helion calls the

"Cacophiles."

Alternate Organization neuroform, commonly called Warlocks:

AO AOEN, the Master-Dreamer, a Peer.

AO VARMATYR, one of the Lords-Paramount of the Silence, commonly called Swans.

NEO-ORPHEUS the Apostate, protonothary and chair of the COLLEGE of HORTATORS.

ORPHEUS MYRIAD AVERNUS, founder of the Second Immortality, a Peer.

Cortial-Thalamically Integrated neuroform,

commonly called:

Invariants:

KES SENNEC the Logician, a Peer.

Cerebelline neuroform:

WHEEL-OF-LIFE, an Ecological Mathematician, a Peer.

GREEN-MOTHER, the artiste who organizes the ecological performance at Destiny

Lake.

OLD-WOMAN-OF-THE-SEA, of the Oceanic Environmental Protectorate.

DAUGHTER-OF-THE-SEA, a terraformer of Early Venus.

Mass-Mind Compositions:

The ELEEMOSYNARY COMPOSITION, a Peer.

The HARMONIOUS COMPOSITION, of the College of Hortators.

The BELLIPOTENT COMPOSITION (disbanded).

Nonstandard neuroforms:

VAFNIR of MERCURY EQUILATERAL STATION, a Peer.

XENOPHON of FARAWAY, Tritonic Neuroform Composure School, called the

Neptunians.

XINGIS of NEREID, also called DIOMEDES, Silver-Grey School.

NEOPTOLEMUS, a combination of Diomedes and Xenophon.

Mortals:

VULPINE FIRST IRONJOY HULLSMITH, an Afloat.

OSHENKYO, an Afloat.

LESTER NOUGHT HAAKEN, an Afloat.

DRUSILLET ZERO SELF-SOUL, an Afloat.

SEMRIS of IO, an Ashore.

ANTISEMRIS, an Ashore.

NOTOR-KOTOK UNIQUE AMALGAMATED, an Ashore.

An OLD MAN, gardener of a grove of Saturn trees, who claims to be of the

Antiamaranthine Purist school, not otherwise identified.

Electrophotonic Self-Aware Entities: Sophotechs:

RHADAMANTHUS, a manor-house of the SILVER-GREY school, million-cycle capacity.

EVENINGSTAR, a manor-house of the RED school, million-cycle capacity.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR, advisor to the College of Hortators, ten-million-cycle

capacity.

HARRIER, consulting detective, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity.

MONOMARCHOS, a barrister, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity.

AURELIAN, host of the Celebration, fifty-thousand-million-cycle capacity.

The ENNEAD consists of nine Sophotech groups, each of over a billion-cycle

capacity, including WARMIND, WESTMIND, ORIENT, AUSTRAL, BOREAL, NORTHWEST,

SOUTHEAST, and others.

EARTHMIND, the unified consciousness in which all terrestrial machines, and

machines in Near-Earth-Orbit, from time to time participate: trillion-cycle

capacity.

Simulacra, Fictional Persons, Constructs:

COMUS, an avatar of AURELIAN.

SOCRATES and EMPHYRIO, constructs of NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

The Justices of the CURIA.

SCARAMOUCHE, an extract of Xenophon the Neptunian.

The Envoy of DIOMEDES of NEREID.

MINOR CHARACTERS, INCLUDING HISTORICAL OR FICTIONAL PERSONS MENTIONED IN THE

TALE:

AO ANDAPHANTIE, Daphne's name when she was a warlockess.

AYESHA, a cottage-mind used by Daphne, ten-thousand-cycle capacity.

CURTIS MAESTRICT, the Parliamentary Protonothary, and a friend and client of

Daphne's.

JASON SVENTEN SHOPWORTHY, whose odd behavior has piqued the curiosity of the

Sophotechs.

KSAHTRIMANYU HAN, the First Speaker of the Parliament.

UTE NONE STARK, Daphne's mother.

YEWEN NONE STARK, Daphne's father.

HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL PERSONS:

Ao Enwir the Delusionist, famous for his treatise, "On the Sovereignty of

Machines."

Ao Ormgorgon Darkwormhole Noreturn of the Black Swan Coven, captain-monarch of

the multigeneration starship Naglfar, and culture hero who founded the Silent

Oecumene at Cygnus X-l.

Ao Solomon Oversoul, marshal of the jihad in service to the Witch-King of

Corea, credited with orchestrating the defeat of the Bellipotent

Composition during the Era of the Fifth Mental Structure.

Buckland-Boyd Cyrano-D'Atano, the first man to survive a Mars landing.

Chan Noonyan Sfih of Io, explorer who accidentally set fire to Pluto.

Demontdelune, an unfortunate who came to grief on the dark side of the moon.

Enghathrathrion, a celebrated poet of the late-period Fourth Mental Structure.

Hamlet, a character from a linear-experience simulacrum, William Shakespeare,

Era of the Second Mental Structure.

Hanno, of Carthage, sailed down the coast of Africa. The first explorer whose

name is recorded by history.

Harlequin, a clown from the Italian Commedia del'Arte Era of the Second Mental

Structure.

Jason, master of the Argo, who sailed to Golden Cheronese and returned with

the Fleece.

Mancuriosco the Neuropathist.

Mother-of-Numbers, a Cerebelline mathematician, whose disquisition on Noetic

Mathematics formed a foundation for Noumenal technology.

Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on Luna.

Oe Sephr al-Midr the Descender-into-Clouds, early Jupiter explorer.

Scaramouche, a clown from the Italian Commedia del'Arte Era of the Second

Mental Structure.

Sir Francis Drake, Master of the Golden Hind, discovered the Northwest

Passage.

Sloppy Rufus, the first dog to survive a Mars landing (Bucky-Boy Cyrano's

dog).

The Porphyrogen Composition, a noted sect of astronomers.

Ulysses, King of Ithaca, who sailed far to know the minds of men and their

ways, returning from the underworld.

Vandonnar, according to pre-Ignition Jovian

poetry, a cloud-diver so entirely lost in the storms surrounding the Great Red

Spot, that even death found him unable to locate the course to the afterlife,

and therefore Vandonnar circles eternally in the storm, forever seeking,

forever lost.

Vanguard Single Exharmony, survived the first manned mission into the Solar

Photosphere.

THE CYBORG

He opened the door onto a crowded boulevard of matter-shops, drama-spaces,

reliquaries, shared-form communion theaters, colloquy-salons, and flower

parks. An elaborate hydrosculpture of falls and aerial brooks spread from a

central fountain works throughout the area, with running water held aloft by

subatomic reorientations of its surface tension, so that arches and bows of

shining transparency rose or fell, splashed or surged with careless

indifference to the reality of gravity. Light, scattered from tall windows

lining the concourse or from banners of advertisements or from high panels

opening up into the regional mentality, was caught and made into rainbows by

the high-flowing waters. Petals from floating water lilies drifted down across

the scene.

Beneath all this beauty was a crass ugliness. More than three-quarters of the

people were present as mannequins. This was evidently a place meant for

manorials, cryptics, or other schools that relied heavily on telepresentation.

Since Phaethon no longer had access to any kind of sense-filter, all these

folk, no matter how splendid of dress or elegant of comportment they might

have appeared to an observer in the Surface Dreaming, looked to him like so

many ranks and ranks of gray, dull, and faceless mannequins.

There may have been beautiful music sweeping the area; excluded from the

mentality, Phaethon was deaf to it. Here and there were hospice boxes or

staging pools, ready to send

out dreams or partials, calls, messages, or any form of tele-presentation. All

channels were closed to Phaethon, and he was mute. There were dragon-signs

burning like fire in the air, displaying messages of unknown import. Phaethon

could not read the subtext or hypertext; Phaethon was illiterate. There may

have been thought-guides in the Middle Dreaming to allow him to remember, as

if he had always known, where to find the public transport he sought. Mnemonic

assistance gone; Phaethon was an amnesiac. There may have been ornament and

pageantry in the dream-stages gathered in the air around him, lovely beyond

description, or signs and maps to show Phaethon where, in this wide concourse,

might be the way or the road he sought. But Phaethon was blind.

Here and there among the mannequins, the face of a realist or vivarianist

showed. Their eyes turned dull when they lit on Phaethon, and their gazes slid

past him without seeing. All sense-filters were tuned to exclude him. The

world was blind to him as well.

He expected the banners overhead to swoop down on him when he looked up. But

no. They floated on by, shouting with lights and garish displays. Even the

advertisements ignored him.

No matter. Phaethon tried to keep his thoughts only on the next steps

immediately before him. How to find out where he was? How to find Talaimannar?

How to go from here to there? Once there, how to find out why Harrier

Sophotech recommended that place?

He had to ask someone for help, or directions.

Phaethon stepped behind a stand of bushes; there was a flow of water from the

fountain works overhead, forming a rippling, translucent ceiling. Was anyone

watching? He assumed not.

He doffed his armor and covered it with the cape of nanomaterial, which he

then programmed to look like a hooded cloak. Phaethon himself merely drew out

some of the nanomaterial from the black skin-garment he wore, and drew circles

around his eyes, to solidify into a black domino mask. And that was that: Both

of them were now in disguise. He hoped it was enough to fool at least a casual

inspection. He programmed the suit to follow him at a fixed distance, avoiding

obstacles; to "heel" as Daphne would have said.

He stepped out again into the concourse, followed by the bulky, cloaked form

of his armor, looming three paces behind him. He went downstairs and found a

pondside esplanade that had fewer mannequins walking along it. He saw real

faces; faces made of flesh or metal, or cobra scales, or polystructural

material, or energy surfaces. They were laughing and talking, signaling and

depicting. The air seemed charged with a carnival excitement. Many people

skipped or danced as they strolled, moved by music Phaethon could not hear.

Others dived over the side of the esplanade, to glide among the buildings and

statues in the pond.

He did not know what particular event was being celebrated. It was rare to see

so many folk together. Whatever bunting or decoration swam in the dreamspace

here, which might have given him a clue as to the nature of the occasion, was,

of course, invisible to him.

People smiled and nodded at him as they walked by, full of good cheer. "Merry

Millennium! May you live a thousand years!"

He had not realized how much he had missed, and was going to miss, the sight

of friendly human faces. Phaethon smiled back, waving, and calling out, "And a

thousand years to you!"

Phaethon reminded himself that he had to be careful. Theoretically, the

masquerade protocol would not protect him, since he was no longer part of the

celebration, no longer part of the community. But how many people would even

try to read his identity if they saw him wearing a mask during a masquerade?

Most people, Phaethon guessed, would not.

The rule from the Hortators was that no one was to give him aid, comfort, food

or drink, or shelter, sell him goods or services, or buy from him, or donate

charity to him. This rule did not (in theory) actually prohibit speaking to

him, or looking at him and smiling, although that was the way it surely would

be practiced.

If Phaethon tried to buy something from a passerby, Aurelian was obligated to

warn him that he was about to be contaminated with exile. But as long as

Phaethon did not try to win from the passersby either food or drink or comfort

or shelter or charity, Aurelian would no doubt stand mute. Sophotechs had a

long, long tradition of failing to volunteer any information that had not been

specifically asked.

It was hard. A couple walking hand in hand were passing out wedding-album

projections of their future children. Phaethon smiled but declined to take

one. A young girl (or someone dressed as one) skipping and licking a floating

balloon-pastry offered him a bite; Phaethon patted her on the head, but did

not touch her pastry. When a laughing wine-juggler, surrounded by musical

firecrackers, and balancing on a ball, rolled by and tried to thrust a glass

of champagne into Phaethon's hand, Phaethon was not able to refuse except by

jerking his hand away.

The juggler frowned, wondering at Phaethon's lack of courtesy, and raised two

fingers as if to try to find out who Phaethon really was. But the juggler was

distracted when a slender, naked gynomorph, fluttering with a hundred

stimulation scarves, jumped up in drunken passion to embrace him. Singing a

carol to Aphrodite, the two rolled off together, while the juggler's bottles

and goblets fell this way and that.

Phaethon let the throng carry him down the esplanade.

The pressure of the crowd eased when Phaethon came to a line of windows, two

hundred feet tall or more, which looked out upon a balcony larger than a

boulevard. Out onto the balcony they all went together. Phaethon climbed up a

pedestal holding a statue of Orpheus in his pose as Father of the Second

Immortality. The stone hands held up a symbol in the shape of a snake

swallowing its own tail. Phaethon put his foot in the stone coils of the

serpent and pulled himself high, looking left and right above the heads of the

crowd.

Several lesser towers and small skyscrapers grew up from the railing of the

balcony, like little corals fringing the topless supertower of the space

elevator.

Beyond the balcony, the metropolis spread out from the mountain-base of the

space elevator in three concentric circles. Innermost and oldest, the center

circle consisted of huge windowless structures shaped according to simple

geometries; giant cubes, hemispheres, and hemicylinders, painted in bright,

primary colors, connected by rectilinear motion-lines and smart roads. The

architecture followed the Objective Aesthetic, with the building shapes,

slabs, and plaques all rigidly

stereotyped. There was little movement in this part of the city; human beings

of the basic neuroform tended to find these faceless buildings and looming

monoliths intolerable. Mostly, this central ring housed Sophotech components,

warehouses, manufacturies. Invariants, who had little desire for beauty or

pleasure or inefficiency, lived here, dwelling in square dormitories arranged

like rank upon rank of coffin-beds.

The second ring was done in the Standard Aesthetic. Here were black pools and

lakes of nanomachinery, with many brooks and rills, touched with white foam of

the dark material streaming from one to another. Tiny waterfalls of the

material formed where cascade-separator stages mixed and organized the

components. Each lake was surrounded by the false-trees and coral

bioformations of nanomanufactory. A hundred solar parasols raised orchidlike

colors to the sun. The houses and presence chambers were formed of strange

growth, like sea-shells; one spiral after another, shining with lambent

mother-of-pearl, rose to the skyline. Blue-black, dark pearl, glinting silver,

and dappled blue-gray hues dominated the scene. Thought-gardens, coven places,

and sacred circles dotted the area, along with nymphariums, mother trees, and

staging pools. Warlocks and basics tended to prefer the chaotic fractals and

organic shapes of the Standard Aesthetic. Wide areas of garden space were

occupied by the decentralized bodies of Cerebellines.

Beyond this, on the hills surrounding, green arbors and white mansions

prevailed. This was the Consensus Aesthetic, patronized mostly by manor-born

and first-generation basics. Greek columns marched along the hilltops; formal

English gardens rested in green shadows before grand houses done in the

Georgian style, or neo-Roman, or stern Alexandrian.

In the far distance, Phaethon saw a wide lake. On the lake were a hundred

shapes like jewel-armored clipper ships, whose sails were textured like a

dozen wings of butterflies, surrounded with light.

Now Phaethon knew where he was. This city was Kisumu, south of Aetheopia,

overlooking Lake Victoria. And Phaethon understood the wonder and excitement

of the crowd. For the huge shapes in the lake were the Deep Ones.

These were the last of the once-great race of the Jovian half-warlocks, a

unique neuroform that combined elements from the Cerebelline and Warlock

nervous-system structures. Once, they rode the storms and swam in the

pressurized methane atmosphere of Jupiter, before its ignition. When the time

came to end their way of life, they chose instead to enter whalelike bodies

and to sleep at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, where they called back and

forth to each other, and wove songs and sonar images relating to the vast,

sad, and ancient emotions known only to them; and made sounds in the deep,

which reminded them, but could not recapture, those songs and sensations their

old Jupiter-adapted Behemoth bodies once had made in the endless atmosphere of

that gas-giant planet.

Once every thousand years, only during the time of the Millennium, they woke

from their dreams of sorrow, grew festive gems and multicolored membranes and

sails along their upper hulls, rose to the surface, and sang in the air.

By an ancient contract, no recordings could be made of their great songs, nor

was anyone allowed to speak of what they heard or dreamed when that music

swept over them.

No wonder so many people were here in reality.

Phaethon's heart was in his throat. The songs of the Deep Ones he had only

heard once before, since he had not attended this ceremony his second

millennial masquerade, during Argentorium's tenure. That time once before,

three thousand years ago (during the tenure of Cuprician) the song had sung to

him of vastness, emptiness, and a sense of infinite promise. It was as if

Phaethon had been plunged into the wide expanses of the Jovian cloudscape; or

into the far wider expanses of the stars beyond.

The Deep Ones had originally been designed also to serve as living spaceships,

able to swim the radiation-filled and dust-filled vacuum between the Jovian

moons, able to tolerate the almost unthinkable re-entry heat of low-orbit

dives down into the Jovian atmosphere. But the early successes in cleaning

circumjovial space and in taming the Jovian magnetosphere, made those

space-lanes safe and economical for ships of ordinary construction; the

emplacements of sky hooks made alarming re-entries unnecessary. The Deep Ones'

way of life was past; the danger and romance of space travel was removed.

Phaethon had heard all of this in their song, so long ago. It had planted the

seed that blossomed into his own desire to embrace his dream of star travel.

It had been Daphne who had brought him to hear it. But had that been Daphne

Prime, or her ambassador-doll, Daphne Tercius? Phaethon could not remember.

Perhaps his lack of useful sleep was beginning to affect his memory.

Phaethon jumped down from the pedestal and began to push his way through the

crowd, and away. For the Deep Ones did not give away their grand, sad music

freely. Everyone who did not exclude the music from his sense filter would

have a fee charged to his account; and, when the computers detected that

Phaethon could not pay, he would be unmasked. Once Phaethon was unmasked, no

one, of course, would help him. Not to mention that the performance would be

delayed, and the afternoon spoiled for everyone. (He was amazed to discover

that he still cared about the convenience and pleasure of his fellowmen, even

though they had ostracized him. But the wonder of that first Deep One symphony

he had once heard still haunted his memory. He did not want to diminish the

joy of folk happier than he.)

The crowd thinned as he rounded the space elevator, and came to the side

facing away from the lake. Several dirigible airships, as large as whales

themselves, were docked with their noses touching the towers rising from the

balcony sides. They had dragon-signs in the air, displaying their routes and

times in a format Phaethon could not read.

Phaethon stopped a passerby, a woman dressed as a pyretic. "Pardon me, miss,

but my companion and I are looking for the way to Talaimannar." He gestured

toward the hooded and cloaked figure of his armor, standing silently behind

him. He spoke what was not quite a lie: "My companion and I are involved in a

masquerade game of hunt-and-seek, and we are not allowed to access the

mentality. Could you tell me how to find the nearest smart road?"

She cocked her head at him. Her dancing eyes were surrounded by wreaths of

flame, and smoke curled from her lips when she smiled. When she spoke,

Phaethon had no routine to translate her words into his language and grammar

and logic.

He tried more simply: "Talaimannar .. . ? Talaimannar ... ?

Smart road?" He pantomimed sliding along a frictionless surface, hands waving,

so that she giggled.

By her emphatic gesture he understood she meant that the smart roads were not

running; she pointed him toward a nearby airship and pushed him lightly on the

shoulder, as if to say, Go! Go!

Phaethon froze. Had she just helped him, or offered him passage on some ship

owned by her? There was no alarm in her eyes; to judge from her expression,

there was no secret voice from Aurelian warning her. And the woman was turning

away, drawn by the movement of the crowd. Evidently she was not the owner.

Phaethon moved up the ramp. Closer, he saw the airship bore the heraldic

symbol of the Oceanic Environmental Protectorate. It was a cargo lifter,

perhaps the very one that had brought one or more Deep Ones from the Pacific

to Lake Victoria.

The throngs began to fall silent. Out on the lake, Deep Ones were sailing to

position, raising and unfurling their singing-fans. A sense of tension, of

expectancy, was palpable in the air. Phaethon stepped reluctantly across the

gilt threshold of the hatch and into the ship's interior, his eyes turned over

his shoulder.

Giant magnifier screens, focused on the distant Deep Ones, floated up over the

edge of the huge balcony. The images showed the Deep Ones, sails wide and

high, motionless on the surface of the lake, all their prows pointed toward

the Deep One matriarch-conductor, who floated like a mountain above her

children, her million singing-flags like an Autumn forest seen along a

mountainside.

Phaethon's feet were slow. He wanted so desperately to hear this one last

song. Except for tunes he might whistle himself, or music shed from

advertisements passing by, Phaethon would not hear songs again: no one would

perform for him; no one would sell him a recording.

He steeled himself and turned his back. The hatch shut silently behind him.

The deck was deserted. The place was empty.

Before him, carpeted in burgundy, set with small tables and formulation rods

of glass and white china, was an observation deck. Antique reading helmets

plated with ornamental brass nested in the ceiling. A line of couches faced

tall windows overlooking the prow, with seeing rings in little dishes to one

side. The privacy screens around the couches were folded and transparent at

the moment, but Phaethon could still see ghostly half-images of creatures from

Japanese mythology depicted in the glassy surface.

He did not recognize the aesthetic. Something older than the Objective period

perhaps? Whatever it was, it was opulent and elegant.

Phaethon stepped aboard; his armor stepped after him. Phaethon raised his hand

to make the open-channel gesture, then stopped himself, looked at his hand

sadly, and lowered it. He could not access any information just by directing a

thought or gesture at it, not ever again. But it would not be hard to adapt,

he told himself. He was a Silver-Grey; and speaking out loud was one of the

traditions Silver-Greys diligently practiced.

"Who is here? What is this place? Is there anyone aboard?"

No answer. He stepped forward toward the couches, sat down gingerly.

The privacy screen to his left was half-open, so that one transparent panel

was between him and the left-hand windows looking down on the balcony. Within

the frame of this screen, the scene had more color and motion than elsewhere.

Every gray mannequin within this frame was suddenly colored and costumed and

bestowed with an individual human face. Overhead, banners and displays curled

through the air, drifting. But any mannequin who stepped out of the frame

turned gray again, and any banner vanished.

The privacy screen must have been tuned to the Surface Dreaming, Phaethon

realized. It was an antique of some sort that translated mental images into

light images. He amused himself for a moment by moving his head left and

right, so that different parts of the balcony, now to the right and now to the

left, were touched with extra color and pageantry. Gray mannequins were

transformed to breathtaking courtiers, splendid in dress, and then, with

another move of his head, back into gray mannequins again.

Then he saw, amid the pageantry, a figure in white and rose lace with a

tricorn hat, face disfigured by a hook nose and hook chin. It was Scaramouche.

Behind him were Columbine in her harlot's skirts and Pierrot, pale-faced and

in baggy white. The three pantomime figures were moving against the flow of

the crowd with deliberate haste; their heads moved in unison, back and forth,

scanning the crowd with methodical sweeps.

They closed in on a figure dressed in gold armor; but no, it was merely

someone dressed as Alexander the Great, in a gilt breastplate. Alexander the

Great stared at them in confusion; the three pantomime clowns bowed and

frolicked, and Alexander turned away. Scaramouche and his two confederates

stood a moment, motionless, as if hearing instructions from some remote

source.

Phaethon tried to tell himself that this was some coincidence of costuming.

Xenophone's agent would not be so foolish as to continue to dress in the same

costume as before. No doubt these were merely Black Manorials, looking for

Phaethon to taunt or humiliate him, and dressed in the way Phaethon had said

his enemy had dressed. It would have been easy to copy the costume from the

public records of the Hortators' inquest.

Except that Black Manorials could have simply found out from the mentality

where Phaethon was. The Hortators, without doubt, would have posted

conspicuous notices telling everyone what Phaethon had done, and where he was,

and how to avoid him. Only someone who did not want to leave a trace would

attempt to find Phaethon by eye.

As if stimulated by a silent signal, the three pantomime clowns now turned

toward the airship docks. Their eyes seemed to meet Phaethon's own, staring up

at the windows where he stood. The eyes moved to Phaethon's left, where the

armor stood, covered by a hooded robe.

Phaethon said to himself: Surely they are not looking for two figures, one in

black, one in a robe.

But the three figures began pushing through the crowd toward the airship dock.

They passed outside the range of the frame of the privacy screen, and suddenly

they were merely three anonymous gray mannequins lost in a throng of similar

mannequins.

Phaethon squinted, but, separated from the mentality, he could not amplify his

vision, make a recording, or set up a motion-detection program to discover

which of the moving bodies lost in the crowd were the ones he sought.

Disconnected, he was blind and crippled. His enemies were coming, and he was

helpless.

He could not send out a responder-pulse to discover the serial numbers of the

mannequins involved; he could not call the constables. If he logged on to the

mentality to make the call, descendants of the enemy virus civilizations would

come out from hiding and strike him down the moment he opened a channel.

Was there a way to send a voice-only signal from the circuits in his armor?

Phaethon jumped off the couch and pushed back the hood on the figure behind

him. He looked at the contact points and thought-ports running along the

shoulder boards of the armor. There was an energy repeater that could be tuned

to the radio frequencies set aside for the constabulary; here was a sensitive

plate that could react to voice command. All he needed was a carrier wire to

run from the one to the other.

That wire was not something his nanomachinery cape could produce. He could

have bought it for a half-second coin at any matter-shop ... had he been

allowed. As it was, he could broadcast a loud, meaningless noise. A scream. A

scream to which no one would listen.

He stepped back toward the privacy screen and tried to turn it on its hinges

to face that part of the crowd near the bottom of the ramp leading up to this

ship. The screen would not budge. He could not see where the mannequins

controlled by the enemy might be.

Now what? If only he had been a character from one of his wife's dream-dramas,

he could find a convenient ax or bar of iron, and rush out to battle the foe,

club swinging, his shirt ripped to display his manly shoulders and hairy

chest. But strength would not serve against these mannequins; the mind

motivating them was not even physically present.

And wit would not serve, not if there was, in fact, a Nothing Sophotech

directing their actions, a Sophotech clever enough to move through the Earth

mentality without coming to the notice of the Earthmind.

What was left? Spiritual purity? Moral rectitude?

And, if it was a moral quality involved, what could it be? Honesty?

Forthrightness? Blind determination?

Phaethon thought for a moment, gathering his courage. Then he threw the robe

off his armor and had the black material swirl around him, fitting the gold

segments into place. He closed the helmet.

Phaethon stepped to the hatch of the airship and flung it open, but he was

careful not to step over the threshold. He stood at the top of the ramp,

somewhat above the nearby crowd. Three gray mannequins were stepping

purposefully toward the foot of the ramp; the leader paused with one foot on

the ramp, his blind, blank head turned up suddenly to see Phaethon standing,

shining in his gold adamantine armor, at the end of the ramp above him.

A long low trembling note of haunting beauty, like the sigh of a sad oboe,

came up from the surface of Lake Victoria, rose, gathered strength, and filled

the wide sky. It was the first note of the overture, the first voice of the

choir. Just that one note brought a tear to Phaethon's eye. Except for the

three mannequins facing him, all other spectators were turned toward the

distant lake, looks of tense wonder and rapt enchantment on their features,

like people swept up in a dream.

Phaethon touched the energy repeater on his shoulder board. He heard nothing,

but he knew a loud pulse, like a shout, passed across nearby radio channels.

The note trembled and fell mute. Silence, not music, filled the air.

Phaethon had been noticed. The Deep Ones were not singing. Some signal

inaudible to Phaethon swept through the gathered crowd. With a murmur of

anger, and a long hissing, rustling noise, a thousand faces suddenly turned

toward him. Every eye focused on the gold figure.

The three mannequins at the foot of the ramp paused, motionless. Whatever they

had intended for Phaethon, they evidently did not wish to do in full and

public view.

The murmur of anger rose to a shout. It was a horrible noise, one Phaethon had

not heard before in all his life; the sound of a thousand voices all calling

for Phaethon to get out, to leave, to let the performance ceremony continue.

Instead of music, now, shouts of outrage, shrill questions, and sounds of

hatred roared in the air.

The three gray mannequins were still motionless at the bottom of the ramp.

Phaethon raised his hand and pointed a finger at these three. He knew no human

ear could hear him or distinguish his words over the roar of the crowd; but he

also knew that there were more than human minds listening to him now. Events

like this rapidly filled the news and gossip channels; anything he did would

be analyzed by mass-minds and by Sophotechs.

"The enemies to the Golden Oecumene are here among you. Who projects into

these three mannequins here? Where are the constables to protect me from their

violence? Nothing! For all your superior intellect, you cannot and you dare

not strike at me openly; I denounce you as a coward!"

Another rustling murmur ran through the vast crowd there. Contempt and

disbelief, disgust and anger were clear on every face. And then, just as

suddenly, the eyes focused on him went glassy and dull. By an unspoken common

consent, the crowd were tuning their sense-filters to ignore him; perhaps they

were opening redaction channels to forget him, so that, in later years, their

memories of this fine day would not be marred by the rantings of a madman.

Like a wind blowing through a field of wheat, with one motion, every head in

the crowd turned back toward the lake.

Phaethon smiled grimly. Here was the moral error of a society that relied too

heavily on the sense-filter to falsify their reality for them. Reality could

not be faked. The Deep Ones did not use anything like a sense-filter. If the

Deep Ones had any channels open in the mentality, they would still be aware of

Phaethon, and they would still refuse to offer their gift of song to one, like

Phaethon, who would not and could not thank them, or repay them, or return the

gift. The crowd could well ignore him; but the Deep Ones would not sing.

Were they waiting for him to walk away? It must occur to some of them that it

would take hours for him, on foot, to walk beyond hearing range of the Deep

Song. Were they all willing to wait that long? It also should occur to someone

that, by the rules of the ostracization imposed on him, Phaethon could neither

buy passage on any transport or accept a ride as charity. The only other

option, logically, would be to have a ride imposed upon him without his

asking.

It was a contest of wills. Who was more willing to put up with the

inconvenience of Phaethon's exile? Phaethon, who knew he was in the right? Or

the crowd, who perhaps had some nagging doubt whether the Hortators had been

entirely correct?

If those who opposed him were certain of the moral right-ness of their

position, Phaethon thought, they would simply call the constables and have him

removed. And if not...

The hatch swung shut in front of his nose. The ramp and guy lines retracted

into the docking tower. Phaethon felt a swell of motion in the deck underfoot.

The airship was carrying him away. He stepped over to the windows, hoping for

a last glimpse of the three mannequins at the foot of the now-retracted ramp.

He saw them, but their arms now hung limply, heads lolling, in the

stoop-shouldered posture indicating that they were now uninhabited. Xenophon's

agent (or Nothing Sophotech, or whoever or whatever had been projected into

them) had disconnected and fled.

With a grand sweep of movement, the towers and the wide balcony ringing the

space elevator passed by the observation windows. The world was tilted at an

angle, as the airship heeled over, tacking into the wind and gaining altitude.

Phaethon felt a moment of victorious pleasure. But the moment faltered, and a

sad look came into his eyes, when, outside the windows and far below, he saw

the blue reaches of Lake Victoria. Sunlight flashed from the surface of the

lake, and the texture of high, distant clouds was reflected in the depths.

Amid those reflections, Phaethon saw the flotilla of ancient beings with their

singing-fans spread wide. But he was too far away, by then, to hear anything

other than a faint, sad, far-off echo.

Even if, by some odd miracle, his exile were to end tomorrow, Phaethon would

never hear what the Deep Ones now would sing, no record was made of it, and no

one would speak to him of it.

With an abrupt motion, Phaethon turned and stepped to the bow windows, staring

out at the African hills and skies ahead.

A silver strip of shore passed by below him. Ahead was an endless field of

cobalt blue, crisscrossed by whitecaps-the Indian Ocean.

Phaethon spoke aloud. "Where are you taking me?" Again there was no answer. He

found two hatches at the back of the observation deck, with gangways leading

up and down. He chose the upward ramp and set off to explore.

On a windowless upper deck, surrounded by a mass of cables and fixtures, he

found a six-legged being, with six arms or tentacles reaching up from a

central brain-mass into the control interfaces. Wires ran into the cone-shaped

head. Sections of the body were plated with metal. Three vulture faces stared

out in three directions from the central brain-cone. The hide was dotted and

pierced with plugs and jacks, inputs and outlets. Multiple receivers aided the

migration instincts and flying sense built into the bird heads with

orbit-to-surface navigational plotting.

"You are a fighter-plane cyborg," said Phaethon in surprise. He had never seen

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BooksbyJohnC.WrightTheGoldenAgeThePhoenixExultantTheGoldenTranscendenceTHEPHOEHIXEXULTAHTBookTwoofTheGoldenAgeOr,DispossessedinUtopiaJOHNC.WRIGHTThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookareeitherproductsoftheauthor'simaginationorareusedfictitiously.THEPHOENIXEXULTANT;OR,DISPO...

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John C. Wright - Golden Age 2 - The Phoenix Exultant

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