John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

"I wanted to ask you about my husband."

"Shoot."

She covered her mouth with her glove when she burst into giggles.

He said, "Something wrong?"

"No, no," she said, trying to smother her smile, "It's just that expression, 'shoot.' Coming from you. It's just sort of funny."

He looked blank.

Daphne said earnestly, "I wanted to ask you about the invaders chasing my husband. Are they from another star system? I communed with his memory, and found out that you were investigating something along those lines ..."

He snorted, and smiled sort of a half smile, and shook his head, and said, "Ma'am, for one thing, I asked your husband not to go telling everyone what I was looking into. For a second thing, there is no invasion. Would I be sitting home alone if there were? At least an invasion would give me something to do."

"He saw you tracking a Neptunian legate."

"Maybe the Sophotechs felt sorry for me, or something, and they advised the Parliament to assign me to look into it. I'm not allowed to do police work, mind you, but any investigation that falls under military intelligence-and I guess that includes people pretending to be outside threats-falls into my bailiwick. The whole thing turned out to be a masquerade prank. You may not know, that there are people who really do not like the fact that I am allowed to exist. They don't like armed men. They don't like all the bombs and viruses and particle-beam arrays and thought-worms that are all maintained at public expense. Nuclear bombs, supernuclear bombs, neutron bombs, neutrino bombs, quasar bombs, pseudo-matter bombs, antimatter bombs, supersymmetry-reaction bombs. And so, from time to time, people pull tricks on me, or go cry wolf, just to see if I'll come running."

"A prank ...."

"I can tell you who was behind it this time. Why not? My report to the Parliamentary Warmind Advisory Committee is a matter of public record, even if no one in the public will ever trouble herself to go view it." He looked her in the eye. "The Nevernexters were the culprits. It was Unmoiqhotep and his crew."

Daphne was puzzled. "Phaethon said the Golden Oecumene was under attack by creatures from another star, or from a lost colony, or something. How could it be a prank?"

Atkins shrugged, and made the hand sign asking if she wanted more tea. She waved her finger in the negative. He ordered his tea bowl to refill itself.

He said, "You know who Unmoiqhotep is, don't you? He used to be a she; she was born Ungannis of Io, Gannis' clone-daughter. Her mother was Hathor-hotep Twenty Minos of the Silver-Grey Manor. Unmoiquotep hates both her parents, hates the Gannis-minds, the Silver-Greys, hates everyone. She never got over the fact that, these days, carrying someone's genes doesn't automatically let you inherit all his stuff when he dies and changes bodies, and so she changed her sex and changed her name and eventually became a big wheel among the Nevernext movement."

"But Phaethon saw you chasing a Neptunian."

"I was chasing someone who was downloaded into a Neptunian body form, that's for sure. But it wasn't a Neptunian. He flew up into the air and went orbital, remember? To make a rendezvous with his pinnace craft? Well, how many Neptunians can afford their own spaceyacht? Most of them come in-system on very-low-thrust orbits, and they just sleep for twenty-five years while they are traveling. Wearing nothing but their own bodies, or maybe a layer of ablative foil. They don't have many ships. And the name of the pinnace was Cernous Roc. A play on words. As in a nodding, pendulous rock, get it? Now, who ever heard of a Neptunian naming a ship after a mythical bird like a Roc? But someone whose mother was a Silver-Grey might have. All you Silver-Greys name your ships after mythical birds. And this might also explain why Ungannis wanted to involve Phaethon in her prank. He was a Silver-Grey, like her mom, but, unlike Ungannis, Phaethon made his own fortune without ever having to inherit money from Helion. See?"

Daphne said stiffly, "Don't say 'all you Silver-Greys,' please. I am no longer associated with that school. I now patronize the Red Eveningstar Manor."

"Sorry to hear that. The Silver-Greys aren't as goofy as the Reds."

"Did you say 'goofy' ... ? 'Goofy'?"

"Sorry, ma'am. I thought your sense-filter would automatically read-in 'eccentric,' or 'droll,' or something. My apologies." His face showed no trace of a smile, but his eyes twinkled.

Daphne said, "But your investigation modules, those little black globes Phaethon saw, one of them said you were detecting nanomachinery indicating advanced Sophotechnology; it estimated that it was a technology of a type that came from the Fifth Era, but had evolved into an unrecognizable form. Isn't that something which could only come from a colony?"

"All a hoax. Ungannis was feeding false info into my network."

Daphne paused, looking skeptical. "The prank actually was interfering with military computer systems . .. ?"

"Pardon my language, ma'am, but my military systems are crap. The taxpayers don't want to pay for expensive systems for me; my hardware is a century out of date, and some of my software is a week behind the latest breakthrough. Your husband was able to break in on my secure line and crack my code in about half a second. So why should it have been any harder for Ungannis? Then the Earthmind came and gave me a new system, one that was more secure. If you've read Phaethon's memories, you must've seen when that happened. When that new system came on-line, I was able to find out what was really going on, without any prankster interference."

"So ... none of it was real... ?"

"Don't get me wrong. Unmoiqhotep is going to be severely punished. Interfering with government military equipment, even in peacetime, is a felony, and exposes the perpetrator to capital-level pain, if they are convicted. You don't even want to think about some of the horror scenarios the Curia can make a convict experience, when it comes to military crimes."

"Is it like the fire-emergency scenarios?" Daphne had heard, once, of a prankster convicted of interfering with Fire Brigade software, being condemned to be burnt to death, over and over, or watching loved ones bum, in every possible worst-case scenario of every person he might have endangered.

"Don't even think about it, ma'am. Spoil your day." Atkins ordered his tea bowl to dissolve into a spray of perfume, and stood up in one quick, graceful unfolding of his legs. "I'm afraid that's about all I can do for you, ma'am."

Daphne looked up, "But you haven't done a damn thing!"

Atkins eyes narrowed into a type of smile. "I'm the least free man in all of the Golden Oecumene, ma'am. No one else has so many restrictions on his behavior. What I say, how I act, what I imply, everything is covered by the regulations. It's because I'm dangerous. You don't want to live in a society where the armed forces can just jump up and go off and do whatever they please. I have been entrusted with immense powers. I could crack the planet in half and fry it like an egg, with some of the weapons systems I'm trained on. But only if the Parliament declares war, and the Shadow Administers approve. You see? I'm not a cop. I'm not here to help you. I can't. Not in the way you want."

Daphne stood up, feeling defeated. "Do you have any advice for me?"

"Officially? No. I don't set policy. Unofficially? Go see your husband, if you can find out where he's hiding, and get him to take a noetic examination. The public records all show that the College of Hortators has to reinstate him back in society if he had a good reason to break his word and open his memory box. Thinking you're being invaded by a foreign power seems like a damn good reason to me. It'll come eventually."

Daphne was adjusting her lace cravat. Now she looked up, surprised. "You believe that?"