John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

"Consequently, it would not forgive the use of force or strength merely to preserve life. Mere life, life at any cost, cannot be its highest value. As we expect to be a part of this higher being, perhaps a core part, we must share that higher value. You must realize what is at stake here: If the Universal Mind consists of entities willing to use force against innocents in order to survive, then the last period of the universe, which embraces the vast majority of universal time, will be a period of cannibalistic and unimaginable war, rather than a time of gentle contemplation filled, despite all melancholy, with un-regretful joy. No entity willing to initiate the use of force against another can be permitted to join or to influence the Universal Mind or the lesser entities, such as the Earthmind, who may one day form the core constituencies."

Eveningstar smiled. "You, of course, will be invited. You will all be invited."

You will all be invited. There was something eerie in the way she said it.

Daphne said, "And Phaethon?"

Eveningstar said sadly, "Unless the Hortators alter the terms of their exile, or unless Phaethon finds some independent means to preserve his existence intact for several trillion years, his thoughts and memories will not be present for the final transformational creation of this Universal Mind. We may have to find an alternate to fit into the place in the universal mental architecture we had set aside for him and his progeny."

Rhadamanthus explained in a helpful tone: "Because he will be dead, you see."

"Thanks," said Daphne.

"Welcome," said Rhadamanthus.

Daphne drew in a deep breath. "So. You still haven't answered my question. What are you Sophotechs going to do?"

Rhadamanthus said: "We told you."

Eveningstar said: "We cannot use force against the Hortators. Their actions are legal; their goals are noble and correct."

"You mean you will do nothing," said Daphne.

"That's right!" said Rhadamanthus. "We will do nothing."

"Nothing obvious," said Eveningstar with a gracious smile.

"We're just too damn smart to do anything. Our brains are just too big," said Rhadamanthus, flapping his flippers. "So we're waiting for someone foolish enough to rush in where Sophotechs fear to tread!" And it grinned.

It is odd to see a penguin grin.

"We can do nothing for Phaethon," cooed Eveningstar, inclining her head to gaze down at Daphne, "But we can do much for you."

And Eveningstar drew out from behind her back an image of a small silver casket, tarnished and heavy, with scrollwork around the border.

It was a memory casket.

Daphne looked at it with all the enthusiasm with which a rabbit might look at a snake. She spoke in a flat, toneless voice: "Is that for me?"

uruy once you decide to embrace exile," smiled Even-ingstar. "You cannot open it before."

"What's in it?"

Eveningstar handed it to her. It must have been an imagi-nafestation, not just an icon, since it felt heavy and solid in her hand.

Eveningstar's voice was soft and dovelike, warm, smiling, almost mischievous: "It is a surprise, dear child!"

Daphne stared down at the heavy little casket she held. Her voice was dreary with anger: "I swear, I really hate surprises."

Rhadamanthus flapped his fins against his belly with a solid sound. "So do we, young mistress! So do we. But a world without surprises could not have humans in it. So I suppose the alternative is something we'd hate all the more, isn't it?"

Rhadamanthus helped her pack a rucksack. He designed many useful, lightweight and folding articles and operators she might need, tiny miracles of molecular technology and pseudoma-terialism, most of it self-repairing, with redundant checks against mutation.

Even the generosity of the Red Manorials could not afford a nanomaterial cloak as complex as the one that had been specially designed for Phaethon. Instead, Daphne packed several bricks of nanomaterial, programmed for several basic and useful combinations. She had had her glands and organs modified to be able to endure a very long duration without normal medical attention, and she loaded additional nanomaterial, programmed for nutrition and medical regenerations, into artificial lymphatic glands spaced throughout her new body. She called it her "exile body" and thought it felt clumsy.

Eveningstar gave her a librarian's ring, that she might not lack for companionship and guidance along the way. The ring was filled with Eveningstar's own ghost, and populated with a million programs and routines, famous partials and characters, and every book ever written.

The ring was just barely unintelligent enough to skim the upper edge of the Hortator prohibition against child slavery (which was their name for the legal, but abominable, practice of programming a child so as to make it volunteer to freely act as if it had no free will, and carry out any orders or instructions of its parent without question).

They stood on the wide lawn before Meridian Mansion. To see Daphne off, many queens and princelings, alterns and collaterals of the Red Manors had gathered in glittering finery beneath splendid pavilions and parasols and leafy arbors grown of grape and pomegranate. To one side were long tables set with crystalware, flower displays and quiet light-sculptures. A tremor of soft conversation hung in the air. In the eastern lawn, the bacchants had ceased their melancholy farewell pa-vane. The sun was high, but Jupiter, not yet risen, was no more than a red aura behind the eastern hills.

Eveningstar herself put the ghost ring on Daphne's finger, and uttered one last word of warning: "Remember, that if you even add one more second of memory capacity to this ring I here bestow you, she will wake up, and she will be a child, and you will be considered her mother. The wardens of the puritan reservation will allow ghosts in their land; they will not allow Sophotechnology. If this ring wakes, you will not be permitted on the grounds."

Daphne felt a spasm of irritation. "No motors! No televection or telepresentation! No Sophotechs! Why do these puritans make it so hard to get there?! Am I going to have to walk?"

Eveningstar smiled gently, and said, "The man you go to see has no other way to guard his privacy. It is a privacy he needs. The passing of years wearies him more than you can guess. Remember! You may discuss any topic with the ring, and ask any questions of her you shall like, except that philosophical questions directing her attention to herself, you shall not ask. Self-examination will wake her to sapience as surely as adding capacity, and make her human!"

Daphne felt the ring, warm and heavy on her finger. There were three small thought-ports on the band, and a star of light in the depth of the stone. Phaethon had been born out of an invented partial, a colonial world-killer, who had been asked too many introspective questions.

She shifted the ring to her left hand and wore it on her ring finger where once she had worn a wedding band.

"I just know we are going to be great, great friends!" came a high, thin, sweet voice from the ring.

Daphne rolled her eyes. "Can't I get a sexy male baritone? This sounds like a cricket talking!"

"Be brave!" chirruped the ring.

Next in the presentation line was one disguised as Comus, with his charming wand in one hand, wreathed with grape leaves and crowned in poppies. It was the representative of Aurelian Sophotech himself. "You will not reconsider?"

"I'm going."

"Then good luck. Don't be nervous; everyone on Earth and in the Oecumene is watching."

Daphne had to laugh. "Oh, you just love this, don't you?"

On the face of Comus, dimples embraced a saturnine smile. "What? You think I like it that, during my celebration, a dashing young madman dreaming to conquer the stars becomes convinced that he is hunted by impossible enemies, breaks open his forbidden memories, astonishes the world, ends our universal mass-amnesia, defies the Hortators, and, amid allegations that the Hortator Inquest was tampered with, is exiled? Then his brave young doll-wife, who loves him, even though he loves a lost and dream-drowned first version of her, goes marching into exile herself to try to save him? And all this, while a debate about the nature of individuality, and its danger to the common good, rocks our society to its pillars? A debate, no doubt, which will be embraced within the Grand Transcendence hardly a month away-when all our minds will be made up for a thousand years to come? Oh, my dear Miss Daphne, my celebration will soar through history above all others! Argentorium and Cuprician Sophotechs have already sent me notes conceding that point."