John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

A wide zone of gold-colored light spread out from Sol and kept spreading, reached past the outermost limit of the other sphere and kept reaching. "Here he is in one hundred millennia...."

The sphere of gold now reached beyond the edge of the projection and seemed to fill the night.

Helion said, "And I cannot show where Phaethon will be in five hundred millennia without reducing the scale of the model. It would be a major segment of this arm of the galaxy. Do you see why they came forward to stop him? Because once he was gone from this system, no other ship could ever catch him, no one could overtake him. Not in that ship."

"You are assuming they could not build a ship like the Phoenix Exultant?"

"I suspect their technological level to be less than ours. If they equaled us, why would they hide? And secrecy maintained so diligently across a reach of centuries bespeaks a strong central government, which implies diminished personal liberty, therefore lack of innovation, therefore stagnation. I don't care how smart their Sophotechs might be; even Sophotechs cannot change the laws of physics or the laws of economics, politics, and liberty. I think they have no ship like the Phoenix Exultant. I think they have no men like Phaethon. I do not know what motivates the Silent Ones, or who or what they are. I do not know how long they have been among us, watching us, perhaps influencing us in subtle ways. The only thing I do know, based on what has provoked them to stir from their hiding, is that they fear Phaethon."

He waved his hand at the illusion of stars around him. "He can make all their dreams of empire go away." He closed his fist. The stars vanished. Normal light returned.

Daphne put her hands on her hips and scowled. "Well, if they hate him, they must love you! You and your Hortators were all set to stop Phaethon and kill off his dream. You made him mortal and threw him into the gutter to die. You did all the Silent Oecumene's work for them! You!"

Helion said gravely, 'Tragic circumstance forced our hands. We were seeking to preserve this, the best of civilizations the mind of man can conceive. And even then we offer Phaethon no harm; we merely refused to help him endanger our lives, and urged others not to help him either. Can we be blamed for that?"

Daphne's eyes flashed. "Blame? It is not illegal to be a coward, if that is what you mean! Or a hypocrite. But I would not do everything the law allows, not things I thought were wrong; and you your whole life have said that people ought to avoid what's wrong and ugly and base and inhuman, whether it's legally allowed or not. You said it often enough. An easy thing to say. Hard to do."

Helion's brows drew together. "If I erred in respect to Phaethon, it was an error of fact, not an error of principle. A fact I did not know, nor did anyone in the Golden Oecumene know, was that the Silent Oecumene still somehow survived, and, apparently, has hostile designs upon us. Because of that lucky accident, Phaethon's dangerous dream now does us more good than harm; but if the facts had been as I, before this moment, thought them, than that danger would have done us no good, nor would Phaethon have been right to expose us to it."

Daphne said, "There is a lie at the bottom of everything you say. It is not war you fear, interstellar war: Phaethon never planned for that, and war is not inevitable, just because people are different. War was just an excuse. It's freedom you fear. Lack of control. After uncounted centuries of hatred and violence, viciousness and powerlust, the Sophotechs finally led us to a society which people had never been honest enough, logical enough, to make for themselves. A society where no one, no one at all, can force anyone to do anything, except to stop the use of force. But that wasn't good enough for you! You made your Silver-Gray and your past-looking, romantic movement in art and sociometry, and tried to talk everyone into living in the past. And that wasn't enough for you, either. You and your friends, Orpheus and Vafnir and all that crew, decided to persuade where you could not force, but your goal was the same. You and your College of Horatators were going to use public opinion as a weapon, to bludgeon into the ground anyone who questioned the precious way of life you wanted to set up! Anyone who challenged it! Anyone who wanted to spread it to the stars! But you did not want the freedom you said you were protecting, not for Phaethon! Oh, no! Because there cannot be any pressure of public opinion among the worlds of distant suns; the news is too slow, space is too big. There can still be a government among the stars, if it is a government like ours-small, unobtrusive, utterly scrupulous, unable to do anything except defend the peace, unable to use force except to stop force. Because, with a government like that, wide distance and lack of communication simply do not matter. But what there cannot be among the stars are these things: a College of Hortators; a monopoly, like yours, on Solar Storm control; or a monopoly, as Orpheus has, on eternal life; Vafnir's control over energy sources; Ao Aoen's entertainment empire. And so on."

Helion said mildly, "The danger of violence is still real, if we expand. Don't the actions of the Silent Oecumene spies and agents among us prove that?"

"Our ability to survive violence expands also. Ever since the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity had the power to destroy a planet. But no one can destroy a whole night sky filled with living stars!"

Helion said, "What the Sophotechs gave us is not just a government of endless liberty but also, if I may add, endless libertines. They also gave us, for the first time, an ability to control the precise shape of our destiny, to predict the course of the future, and, if we use it wisely, the power to preserve our beautiful Golden Oecumene against all shocks and horrors. But control is the key. With Sophotechnic help, I can control the raging chaos of the sun himself, and turn all the mindless forces of nature to our work. What Phaethon dreamt may now be needed, but it is still wild and overly ambitious. The fault is mine. He is much like me-me as I would be without a proper caution and sobriety to restrict my acts to those which serve the social good. He is a spirit of reckless fire. That we may now need him, that outside threats now force us to reconcile with him, does not make his recklessness, his heedlessness, his insubordination, somehow turn out to have been virtues all along."

Daphne crossed her arms, her eyes bright with mocking fury. "So that is going to be your apology for stealing Phaethon's immortality and throwing him to the dogs? 'Sorry, sonny boy, but we need you now, oh, and by the way, I was right all along'?!"

Helion's face grew dark with sorrow. He bowed bis head. But all he said was, "The point is now an academic one. Phaethon's exile will no doubt be revoked, since the attack which prompted him to open his memory casket was, after all, quite real."

Daphne's angry voice snapped, "And you think that's it?! No apologies, no regrets?"

Helion spoke softly as if speaking to himself, "Do I regret my part in these events? Certainly I regret the events; but, as for my part, I played it as honorably as I knew how."

Then his voice grew louder. "And honor requires that I will not betray my oath to support the Hortators, even if Aurelian and Earthmind and all the world besides shuns me for so doing. Even if the Hortators are a weak and wicked instrument at times, and fall too harshly upon those who do not merit the punishment they give, yet, nonetheless, the Hortators are the only instrument we have for preserving decency, humanity, propriety, and wholesomeness of life. We would all be inside machines, drunk and mad on endless and perverted dreams, if it were not for them. Without them, there would be no control to this mad whirlwind we call life."