John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

More and more people had come crowding up on the deck, and filled the stairs, and pushed forward, calling and gesticulating.

And the crowd shouted, "Party! Par-tee! Par-tee!"

Phaethon raised a hand and tried to shout back. "Are you mad? Go home! Rest! We will need to work double shift tomorrow, to make up for what we lost today. Otherwise, how will you eat tomorrow?"

Oshenkyo jumped down from one of the pavilions above and landed neatly atop the hull of the floating coffin. He crouched and put his mouth to the speaking hole, so that his voice was amplified as well. "Big Snoot Gold got plenty to eat, beneath that fancy suit. We all know it! Yummy black, hundred matrix, rich as cream, able to become whatever thing you dream! It's ours, not his; we needs it more!"

Oshenyko wanted Phaethon's black nanomachine lining. A murmur through the crowds showed they all wanted some of it, too.

Phaethon's armor also had amplifiers:

"Idiots! Think about tomorrow! Think about a million tomorrows! I've invited the Neptunians to come and grant you your endless lives again!"

"Tomorrow isn't coming!" shouted the neomorph.

The crowd took up the call. "Tomorrow isn't coming! Tomorrow isn't coming!" And they surged forward to grapple Phaethon's armor.

"Not for you, it isn't," said Phaethon grimly. And he shut his faceplate and made a calculation and sent a low-voltage charge of electricity through the armor's hull. All the hands who were grappling him locked and froze, and everyone pressing forward, each person touching each other in the crowd, passed the charge among them. A noise arose like one Phaethon had never heard before, a gasp of breathless and convulsive agony squeezed from a hundred straining lungs at once.

When he cut the current, everyone dropped to the deck, groaning, twitching. After the press and roar of the crowd, the sudden silence was overwhelming.

Phaethon looked up at a floating constable-wasp. "Once again, you did not help me. Are only those who have wealth and power in this society afforded protection?"

"Apologies. The crowd was only exercising its right of free speech and free assembly, until the moment they laid hands on you. We were gathering units to respond, when you attacked them."

"Attacked? I call it self-defense."

"Perhaps. I notice that not everyone in the crowd was actually touching you; some of them may have been trying to pull people off you. The magistrate has not yet made a ruling. But none of your victims have yet filed a complaint. They all seem to be incapacitated. We will take them to a holding area till they are ready to face trial and punishment."

And with that, dozens of large machines, like flying crabs, swooped down and began picking up the stunned Afloats and spiriting them away.

"Stop! Were are you taking my workforce! I'm going to need them before tomorrow to finish our projects!"

A constable-wasp near his ear said, "For many years, the Afloats, even though they were shunned exiles, never crossed the line to crime. Now, thanks to you, they have. The Golden Oecumene will tolerate no violence. Your other plans will have to wait."

Half the Afloats were gone. The busy flying machines swooped and plucked up more. Soon they were all gone, and the decks were bare.

"When will they be returned to me?"

"I am not obligated to answer that, sir, although I have heard a rumor to the effect that the Hortators are willing to rent them cheap dwellings in Kisumu, near a delirium farm run by Red Eveningstar castoffs. I hear that there is a wide field of pleasure coffins piled up and left to rot among the parks and jungles nearby, with a thousand old dreamsheets and smart-drugs and personality-alterants just lying out on the grass. Some of the Afloats may volunteer to return here for a life of deprivation, hard reality, and hard work. Maybe."

"Then the Hortators have won, haven't they?" whispered Phaethon.

The constable-wasp said, "As to that, sir, I should not venture any personal opinions while in the course of my official duties. But, unofficially, I should warn you against being so quick to take matters so violently into your own hands. Isn't that what got you here in the first place? Good-bye for now. We may be back in the morning, if any of your victims wishes to lodge a complaint."

And then the swarm of constables, which had been constantly overhead ever since Phaethon had arrived, they were also gone.

Below, Phaethon stood facing the mirrors. He attempted Sem-ris and Antisemris first; but their seneschals had been programmed to reject his calls unanswered and unacknowledged.

Then he called Unmoiqhotep, the Cacophile who had so praised him and so adored Phaethon outside the Curia House in the ring-city, just after his hearing. Antisemris (who was also a Cacophile) might help Phaethon if Unmoiqhotep asked.

Phaethon tricked his way past Unmoiqhotep's seneschal by hiding his identity in masquerade. (No Hortator warning appeared to warn Unmoiqhotep's house to reject the call because the Hortators were not able to penetrate the masquerade.) The house accepted to pay for the charges of the call when he announced he wanted to speak "about Phaethon." But when Unmoiqhotep's partial came on-line, the creature reviled Phaethon in no uncertain terms as a fool and a traitor.

"Why do you call him a traitor?" Phaethon asked. (He was getting particularly sick of having that charge leveled against him.)

The partial, like his master, was a bloated fungus, cone-shaped, drooping with nonstandard claws and tentacles. "Phaethon betrayed us! He has failed! We who represent the shining future, we who soar to exulted heights, we who take as implacable foes the dross of the older generation (the already-dead generation, as I like to call them), we have no time in our all-important crusade to trifle with failures! Phaethon has no money now! There is nothing he can do for us!"

Do for us? This reminded Phaethon of the beggar phrase the poor Afloats used to greet any newcomers. How odd to hear it come from the mouths of wealthy men's sons.

Phaethon said: "But there is something you can do for him. If Phaethon had money enough to rent an orbital communications laser, he could contact the Neptunians. They may be willing to hire him as a pilot for the Phoenix Exultant. Instead of being dismantled for scrap, the starship could be sent out to the stars, there to create new worlds."

The image of the Cacophile flopped its tendrils first one way, then the other. "What has that to do with us? Phaethon wants to fly to the stars. He wants to make worlds. I want to find a new wire-point to jolt my pleasure centers, maybe with an overload pornographic pseudomnesia to give it background. Are his dreams any better than mine?"

Phaethon reminded himself that he was here begging for money. He attempted to remain polite. "With all due respect, sir, may I point out that if you help him now, Phaethon, when he achieves his dream, can create such worlds as will be pleasing to you, and your lifelong dream of escaping from the domination of the elder generation will be achieved as well. But if you, instead, burn your brain cells with a wire-point, this serves neither you, nor him."

The partial dripped liquid from three orifices. "But what does all your blather and bother do for us right now? Right this instant? Phaethon is no longer in fashion among us now. After he is dead, perhaps then we will exalt him as a martyr, slain by the cruelty of the elder generation. Yes! There is something for us! But Phaethon alive, still striving after his sick, insane dream? Still hoping to accomplish it? No, oh no. He would be our worst enemy if he succeeded at his attempt, against such odds. Isn't it obvious why? Because he would make the rest of us look so bad."

Phaethon felt mildly sick with astonishment. The Cacophi-les had no intention of ever "escaping" from the "domination" of the older generation. All their moral posturing was merely excuse to disguise their lust to own what they had not earned. To fly to other worlds, and there make lives and civilizations for themselves, would require the kind of work and effort which the Cacophiles disdained.