John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

Most people arrested by the constables merely had their accounts in the mentality locked down, and then were asked to come to the places of punishment at their own time and convenience.

Ironjoy was sentenced to suffer six seconds of direct stimulation of the pain center of his brain, two hours of a remorse emotion fed into his thalamus, and, in simulation, to suffer the lives of his victims from their points of view, in order to learn the sorrow he had caused. Since he had cheated many, many Ashores and many more Afloats, he would be in simulation for a long time. Hours, perhaps weeks. It was the longest period of penal service Phaethon could bring to memory.

Phaethon stepped forward. "What will happen to your business, Ironjoy, if you are kept incarcerated for several weeks?"

Ironjoy's voice radiated from his chest. The tones were harsh and flat. "You know very well. An unmodified man can survive for three days, perhaps four, without water. He can fast for longer than that, if he is in good health. But none of my people are in good health. The Afloats will starve in a month without me to feed them. You have done a great service for the Hortators this day! You have destroyed us."

In the Victorian Age (which Phaethon knew well from Silver-Grey simulations) starving people could commit crimes in order to be kept in jails, and fed at public expense. That option was not open to these poor Afloats, since pain-shock, not incarceration, was the preferred penalty imposed by Curia justice. Ironjoy's sentence was an exception. Perhaps the Hortators had somehow influenced the judgment.

Phaethon said, "Give me your thought-shop, rent-free, during the time you are away."

Ironjpy's insect-face twitched, a spasm of hatred. "How dare you suggest such a thing? It is you who turned me in."

"I turned you in just for this purpose. To get you out of the way and take control of your shop. You know I am the only one with the ability to operate it."

"I have a thought-set in my shop that can render me utterly immune to pity. The Invariants make it. Once I load that set, I could watch all of these people of mine die in lingering hunger and pain without a twitch. And you would not be able to blackmail me into giving my shop to you to save them."

Blackmail? Or simple justice? Phaethon was not inclined to argue the point. The idea that Ironjoy had some compassion for his flock of victims was new to Phaethon; he had been expecting Ironjoy to submit in order to save his wretched business and his position as monopolist and slavedriver.

Phaethon said nothing. He merely waited. The logic of events was clear.

Ironjoy's double shoulders slumped with defeat. "Very well," he said. With no further ado Ironjoy told Phaethon the secret names and command-codes for the thought-shop, and they both signed a contract which would turn the shop and stock back over to Ironjoy on the date of his release from penal service.

Then Ironjoy began to instruct Phaethon in his schedule of prices and fees.

Phaethon held up his hand. "Don't bother. I intend to set my own policy."

Ironjoy regarded him without friendliness. With no further word, Ironjoy stepped from the barge down a gangway to a waiting coracle, and, with a paddle in each arm, rowed his way to the nearest staging pool ashore, that same dank shallow pool where Phaethon had first met Oshenkyo. Here Ironjoy, encased in diamond, would serve his sentence.

It took only two days for hunger, thirst for beer, and the withdrawals from various addictions to drive the angry Afloats back to work at the thought-shop.

At first, Phaethon interviewed them, one after another, and combed through Ironjoy's psychology files on them. They were not a prepossessing lot. In fact, more than once Phaethon learned more of their pasts than he would have liked. Less than a single afternoon passed before he ceased to ask in his interviews anything other than the most businesslike and impersonal questions-the filth and wreckage of their lives, he decided, were none of his concern. He only needed to know what work they were suited to do.

They were not suited for all that much.

The Afloats were a sullen, angry crew, and they did their work with as little effort as possible, and stole, sabotaged, and erased Phaethon's property so often, that soon each one had a constable wasp continuously overhead.

Phaethon did not mind or care. He had spent those two days reviewing and indexing the stock of the thought-shop, rewriting the more ungainly programs, and reconnecting the various scattered chains of thought floating in the barge's disorganized shop-mind. The more disgusting of the dreams, pornographic, morbid, or filled with bloodlust, he erased; others he sold off on the market, to Ironjoy's deviant and back-net customers. With that money he bought a new core for the shop-mind, raised the capacity, and hired a five-minute engineering-student program to redesign his search engine for job-hunting.

On the third day, Phaethon stood in the bow of the ship and announced his new policies to the huddled and sullen mass of Afloats who stood glowering at him (those who had eyes) or snapping their sensor-housings open and shut with loud snaps (those that did not.)

"Ladies and gentlemen, neutraloids, bimorphs, hermaphrodites, gynomorphs, and paragenders. Your lack of immortality does not excuse you from the duty of living well what few decades or centuries you have left to you. Accordingly, I hope to introduce some of the discipline of the Silver-Grey into this little community. Naturally, participation will be voluntary. But those who do participate will be granted special price reductions, bargains, and rebates on a wide variety of thought-shop effectuators.

"Self-delusion will be sharply discouraged, as will intoxication, rage dreams, and out-of-context pleasure stimulants. This shop will not help you alter or abolish your self-identity, but will provide every routine at my disposal to allow you to improve your self-love, self-discipline, and self-esteem. Educational and philosophical programs will be made available at low rentals, as will transitional addictives leading to nonad-dictives, to help you cure yourself of psychiatric zero-sum cycles. All gambling outlets will be shut down to encourage you to save and to invest. Let me describe some of the Silver-Grey disciplines and their benefits ..."

But he was pelted by garbage at that point and had to discontinue. He stepped back and drew a diamond pavilion flap across him like a shield, and used a slow-time routine to note who threw what, so that he could dock wages later.

It was Oshenkyo, in the forefront, who was urging the others on. He shouted toward Phaethon: "Clammy snoffer! You're just a Hortator now! Tell us do this, don't do that, read this, don't smoke that, think this, don't zing that! We zing what we ken! Do as we please! Free men! If we want to jolly up our brains on identics, no business of yours!"

And the others cried: "Hortator! Hortator!"

Phaethon let the disturbance run its course.

After some more drama, more threats and exchanges, Phaethon continued his speech:

"Fellow exiles! You have given up on hope. I have not. This makes it inconvenient for me, since I need your labor to help me accumulate the funds I need to put forward the next part of my plan. I need that labor to be alert, unintoxicated, voluntary. The type of automatic half-brain work that Ironjoy's drugs and sets permitted you to do will prove insufficient for my needs. Therefore, your lives, education, and earning abilities will have to be improved. No doubt this will cause you dismay. I care not. If you dislike my managerial style, feel free to find employment elsewhere. But first hear me out:

"There are rich amounts of thought-work the non-controlled market will bear, as well as entire areas of limited-creative patterning and editorial functions for which there is always a need. But, beyond this, there is an area none of you have explored, even though you have the tools at hand. There is work in scientific and technical fields. There is work in investment, small operations, data migration, context-cleaning, mentality rest spaces. Humble work, but honest! What about pseudo-gastronomies? Everyone stops for false-meals when they work, and the Hortators cannot police the public thought-ways or deviant dark channels! Why can't you own your own businesses, gather your own thought-shops, invest your own capital?