John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

"Ma'am?"

There was no Middle Dreaming here to prompt her. How was she supposed to return that salute?

She fell back on Silver-Grey decorum, touching her riding crop to the brim of her silk hat. Then she smiled her most winning smile, tossed her head, and called out in a gay voice: "My name's Daphne. Do you have a living pool? I've ridden a long way to see you, and I smell like a horse!"

The ring on her rein hand called out, "Hi there! Hi there!"

"Can I help you; ma'am?" His voice was stiff and neutral, as if helping anyone was the furthest thing in the world from his mind.

Daphne subsided and put her smile away. There was no point in trying to be cheery, it seemed. "I'm looking for Marshal Atkins Vingt-et-une General-Issue, Self-Composed, Military Hierarchy Staff Command."

"I'm Atkins."

"You look smaller in real life."

A slight increase of tension in his cheeks was his only change in expression. Amusement? Wry impatience? Daphne could not tell. Perhaps he was trying to restrain himself from pointing out that she was mounted.

All he said was: "May I help you?"

"Well. Yes! My husband thinks we are being invaded from outer space."

"Is that so."

"Yes, it is so!"

There was a moment of silence.

Atkins stood looking at her.

Daphne said: "That he believes it. That part is so. I don't know if I believe it."

More silence.

"I'm sure that is all very interesting, ma'am," he said in a tone of voice that indicated he wasn't. "But what may I do for you? Why are you here?"

"Well, aren't you the Army? The Marines? The Horse Guard and the Queen's Own and the Order of the Knights Templar and the Light Brigade and the musketeers and the cavalry and all the battleships of His Majesty's Royal Navy all wrapped up in one?"

Now he did smile, and it was like seeing a glacier crack. "I'm what's left of them, I suppose, ma'am."

"Well, then! Whom do I see about declaring war on someone?"

Now he did laugh. It was brief, but it was actually a laugh.

"I can't really help you there, ma'am. But maybe I can offer you a cup of cha. Come in."

He called the lovely little cottage in which he lived his "quarters."

"Ma'am, you must know that there is really nothing I can do for you."

"You can get me some tea, Marshal."

"Mm. Fair enough."

There was a pool of life water beneath the polished wooden floor. He slid a panel aside, stooped, and grew two fragile bowls of shell, which he dipped in the fluid once again. The heat of the nanoconstruction warmed the tea, and the unused organics were disguised as mint steam and wafted from the bowls.

Daphne looked at the bare pale walls. An old-fashioned dreaming coat of woven gold and green hung on pegs on one wall. It was stiff, as if brittle with disuse. It faced a standing screen inscribed with bright red dragon signs. The four glyphs read: Honor, Courage, Fortitude, Obedience. There was thought circuitry woven in the red letters, Daphne saw, and she guessed (to her disbelief) their purpose.

Communion circuits; mind links; thousand-cycle communications-and-relay forms. Whoever stared at this screen, if he had the proper responders built into his nervous system, would merge with a near-Sophotech-level supermind, and control millions or billion of ongoing operations. In this case (what else could it be?) military operations.

Impossible. This simple screen could not be the control and command for whatever weaponry and armament, robotic legions or nanoplagues or fighting machines the Golden Oecumene still possessed? Could it? (If there were still such machines lying around. Daphne had the vague notion the all the old war machines were stored in some museum somewhere, and that there were a very great number of them.)

This spartan room hardly seemed the proper setting for the central command-room. Shouldn't there be flags and plumes on the walls? Racks of spears? Or big maps with women clerks in snappy uniforms pushing little toy ships across tabletops? Or an auditorium of linked vulture-cyborgs staring coldly at some wide holographic globes, with dark wires leading into their heads? That was the way it always looked in the history romances.

On the fourth wall, facing the door, was a small rack, carrying a musket, and (when he undid it from his sash so that he could sit) the long sword. The musket had a smooth wooden stock, a barrel of dark metal, and a wave guide of polished brass. The sword was in a sheath of hand-tooled leather, and a knot of red silk cord draped from the rings.

The knife stayed in his belt when he sat.

There was no other furniture in the room, except for unor-namented woven mats on which they sat, and a short tripod holding a rose translucent bowl of fire.

They sipped tea.

"Do you live here alone?"

He said in a matter-of-fact voice: "My wife left me when I wouldn't give up the Service."

The cold, neutral way in which he said that reminded her, for some reason, of Phaethon. It was as if Phaethon had just spoken in her ear, and said: My wife drowned herself when I would not give up the Starship.

"I'm sorry," Daphne said in a soft voice.

"No matter."

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"I'd rather you did not."

"Why do you stay on as a soldier? I mean, isn't the idea of a soldier in this day and age a little-oh, I don't know-"

" 'Anachronistic'?"

"I was going to say 'stupid.' "

A look of distaste began to harden in his eyes, but then, suddenly, and for no reason she could see, he laughed in good humor. "Miss Daphne Tercius Eveningstar! Aren't you a piece of work! Blunt, aren't we?"

She smiled her second most dazzling smile, and spread her hands as if in helplessness. "Most people set their sense-filters to rephrase incoming comments too rude for them to tolerate. I guess I'm not in the habit of watching what I say. But don't worry, I'm sure you'll recover."

"No one is in the habit of watching what they say, these days. Who said that an unarmed society was a rude society?"

Daphne said, "I think it was someone who was killed in a duel. Hamilton, maybe?"

Atkins snorted, and said, "No one is in the habit of living real life, dealing with limitations, making decisions. You Sinkers all live in little bubbles of perception, and let the mentality carry your lives and loves and thoughts back and forth between the bubbles. You should try being real sometime."

"Sinkers" was slang to refer to all the people who wore sense-filters by those (usually primitivists) who did not. The implication was that a "sinker" was just one step away from drowning.

Daphne said stiffly, "I was born real, thank you, and I get enough of that sort of preaching from my parents. Reality is overrated, in my opinion." It was not until after she spoke that a more forceful objection occurred to her: Had it not been for the simulation technology, for mentality recording and mind-edited and other so-called unrealities, she herself, Daphne-doll Tercius, would never had been "born" at all.

Neither would have Phaethon been.

"I disagree, ma'am. Reality is real. And that's why I stay in the Service."

"Why-?"

He shrugged. "Because it's real. It's like I'm the only real man on the planet. I stand guard so that all the rest of you can play. That's what I like about your husband. What he's doing is real, too. A lot less boring than guard duty, too."

"There hasn't been a war, or even a fight, since the early Sixth Era."

"Well." Sarcasm drawled from his voice. "I wonder why that should be."

"You think it's because we're all in awe and terror of you?"

The line of tension in his cheek, which served him for a smile, showed that this was exactly what he thought. But he said, "You didn't come here to debate political theory with me, ma'am."