John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

Here was a hermit cell, webbed with antidetectioa gear, floating in space, hidden inside a ball of ice half a mile across, a cometary head.

The gear detected a ghost-particle array, perhaps as small as several yards across, exchanging signals with a transponder near Neptune.

Vidur scowled. "So Xenophon has already seen the next ten thousand years of our plans and goals, assessed our strength, counted our troops."

Temer said, "The disadvantage of life in a free and open society-we've forgotten how to lock our doors.""

Diomedes held up a single finger. "One. We've only got one trooper. Don't need to be a Sophtech to count that high."

Phaethon said, "If one were equal to one according to the math of these Swans from Cygnus, we'd have less trouble from them."

Diomedes said, "The Transcendence did not predict that the Silent Ones could maintain a full-scale war against us for any length of time. Um. At least what an entity to whom a thousand years is but a day regards as 'a long time.' ..."

Vidur spoke with the certainty very young men tend always to have: "Our predictions were unduly optimistic, I am sure, and made the spy to smile."

Temer said, "He would smile just as much if our predictions overestimated the Silent Oecumene strength as underestimated."

Phaethon said, "He must have seen this ship, even at this distance. We are huge, and we make a lot of noise, and our stern is toward him as we decelerate. What is be thinking? Is this a trap?"

Temer said, "Suppose he had an escape ship-the Phoenix should be able to outrun anything in space. And how far could he go? I think he is saving fuel. He is going to be caught in any case."

Diomedes looked sidelong at Phaethon, and raised a hand to hide a discreet cough. This was one of the Silver-Gray traditions, indicating a wish for a private word or two.

Phaethon's sense filter linked with Diomedes. An imaginary solarium appeared around them. It did not quite have the usual Silver-Gray attention to detail. Instead of an English garden scene appearing outside the eastern windows of the porch, an image of Phaethon on his throne, continuing a conversation with Vidur and Temer, appeared, so that the two men could track what was happening in the outer reality.

Diomedes sat. "You seem troubled, friend."

Phaethon poured himself a cup of imaginary tea. He sipped it, staring moodily into the middle distance. He said, "I wish I could remember what it was I had been thinking during the Transcendence. My body, acting more or less on its own, sent the Phoenix Exultant out here. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Diomedes said, "There is no mystery. The Golden Oecumene has only one operating ghost-particle array. And it is aboard this ship."

"Is Atkins aboard?"

"I am sure he must be."

"The ship brain is still half-asleep. I don't even know what is really going on."

Diomedes leaned across the table and patted Phaethon's arm in a friendly fashion. "Don't fret so! Once the Transcendence is concluded, and all are restored to their normal states, communication lines will be restored, records will be set back in order. In the meanwhile, look at the fine gifts we all got! You now have something like Helion's multiple parallel brain compartments, but with no speed loss; I have a mechanism for interpreting Warlock-type intuitions using a subroutine. See how insightful I am these days?"

Diomedes leaned back and inspected his friend. "Hm. My intuition tells me you are still uneasy."

Phaethon sighed. "I am getting tired of always acting on blind faith. When I do not have gaps in my memory, I have gaps in my knowledge. I always seem to be forced to trust that either my old self, or some Sophotech, has thought out the details of what I am about to do, and has already arranged everything to come out right-it is a childish way to behave. I am tired of being a child."

Diomedes made his eyes crinkle up with a smile. "You are so impatient to leave this 'utopia'?"

"It was never a Utopia. It is a good system. Maybe the best system. But in reality, everything has a cost. The cost of living in a system with fairly benevolent giant superintellects, frankly, is that you have to live as I have done. Blindly."

He tuned one of the windows in the solarium to a view of the nearby stars. Like jewels, they glittered against the velvet dark.

He said, "I yearn for the solitude of empty spaces, Diomedes. There, finally, I shall stand on my own; and if I fall, the fault will be mine and mine alone."

Diomedes said, "I take it there is still something missing from your life?"

Phaethon said, "There is still a gap in my memory. A period of two weeks from seventy years ago is gone; even Rhadamanthus does not have a record of it. I visited a colony of purists living to the east of Eveningstar Manor. Records show I shipped a container to Earth, to the enclave where Daphne was originally born. Telemetry data indicate there may have been biological material aboard. A fortnight. It's a blank. Even the Transcendence could not fill in what was missing. I was aboard ship and cut off from all communication."

"The canister? You have no medical officers or in-spection services on Earth?"

"We are not Neptunians, my good Diomedes. Who would be so rude as to open up someone else's private container? I suppose the purists could have hired any inspectors they wished to examine their packages for them; but purists do not keep system-linked records."

Diomedes posted a rile where he enumerated the parallels between the purists and the Eremites of beyond-Neptune. Neither group entered mind-links of any kind, not even Transcendence. While the rest of civilization celebrated, they remained on their farms and blue houses. He said aloud: "We tend to think the Sophotechs know everything. But what they don't know, they don't know, do they?"

Phaethon stared at the image of the nearby stars, and scowled.

Diomedes said plaintively, "But nothing so very important could have happened in two weeks could it?"

Meanwhile, in the outer conversation, Temer was staring thoughtfully at the chamber hidden in the flying iceberg, watching the readings on the volume of information passing back and forth from the chamber to Neptunian transponders.

"There is someone still alive there," said Temer. "There is too much information volume for an automatic process. This is a mind participating in the Transcendence. He may not be aware of us because he is involved in the visions."

Phaethon said, "Someone still alive, yes, or someone left behind."

Temer turned to him. "You doubt the story told by Xenophon? That the Silent One broadcast himself here across the abyss of space, and was picked up by Neptunian radio-astronomers?"

"Everything the Swans say turns out to be a lie." said Phaethon. "Why not that, also a lie?"

"Do you think there is a vessel like yours? A silent Phoenix?"

Phaethon shook his head. "Worse. There could be a vessel better than mine. The Nothing Machine housed in the surface granulations of a microscopic black hole event horizon. Imagine a larger version of the same thing, accelerated to near light-speed. What armor does it need, except its own event horizon? Any particle it struck in flight would be absorbed. No matter how massive the black hole was made, the singularity fountains at Cygnus X-l could have provided the energy to accelerate it. How could such a thing be seen by our astronomers in flight? It would absorb all light."

Terrier said, "X-ray or gamma point sources would emerge as swept-in particles were sheared by tidal forces. Something for us to look back over astronomical records to check."

Vidur said, "Look. A finer-grained image is being rendered."

It was true. The ghost-particle array now showed some internal details of the ice-locked chamber. The ship mind hypothesized a possible view, based on the fuzzy images, the cloaked echoes of energy discharges. The hypothetical picture showed Xenophon hanging like a blue sphere, in his most heat-conserving form, in fee middle of the tiny chamber.