John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

Curiosity, in Phaethon, was even stronger than grief. He drew his head up. "What is it?" His voice was dull and low.

She gestured toward where he had dropped the knapsack, an elegant flip of the wrist, like a mensal hostess displaying some particularly delectable dessert. "You're the engineer, Lover. You'll recognize it."

He put the silver casket carefully aside and pulled the large gold tablet out of the knapsack. Phaethon straightened, surprise and wonder on his features, climbed to his feet again, with the golden tablet gleaming in his hands. One whole surface, he saw, was patterned with a mosaic of reader-heads and thought-ports, their several shapes and sizes fitted to each other as snugly as a successful puzzle, with no overlap and no empty spaces left over.

He looked up, "It is a noetic-examination circuit."

She spoke with a note of triumph in her voice: "And it's not connected to the mentality. Its an independent unit, isolated, sterile, and safe. Even you cannot believe that it is being influenced by these invader enemies of yours. You see? You do not have to log on to the mentality to prove the memories the Hortators saw were concoctions. Someone has tampered with your brain. That machine will let you prove it. You can prove it to the world; and to yourself."

She smiled again: "Use it, and we can go home, and we can live happily ever after."

He glanced down at the silver casket at his feet, then glanced up at her, his eyes narrowed.

Daphne's lips compressed, a line of scarlet irritation. "And, yes, obviously. You cannot get her back unless you come back."

Phaethon said carefully, "You do not seem overly concerned at the prospect of (may I phrase it delicately ... ?) of losing me to the real version of you."

Her glittering eyes narrowed with pert, supercilious amusement, and a half-smile touched her lips. Her voice lilted with pretended nonchalance: "Oh... ? You mean the old, scared, outdated version... ? All I can say is: May the best bride win."

Phaethon was puzzled by the sudden, warm emotion which came to him then, seeing that undaunted, gallant, sensual look in the eyes of this the woman who was a copy of his wife. She stood, hands on hips, head thrown back, smiling a sunny smile, her figure warm and golden in the candlelight behind her. Phaethon dropped his eyes and pretended to study the noetic tablet he held.

(She was not a perfect copy. This wife differed in certain details. She did not hate him, she had not left him, she had fearlessly thrown herself into exile rather than lose him...)

Phaethon scowled, staring down at the noetic tablet in his hands. He would untangle his feelings later, he decided.

He raised the unit and hesitated.

Daphne asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing should stop me."

She raised an eyebrow. Her green eyes glittered with skeptical puzzlement. "Nothing is stopping you."

He said, "Nothing Sophotech, I mean. The one Scaramouche told me about."

"Is this the 'Evil' Sophotech built by the ghosts of the Second Oecumene?"

"It is real." He said heavily, "I am not deluded."

Daphne sat, leaning back on the cot, and laughed, mockery mingled with relief. "Oh, darling! You really ought to go through more trashy spy-romances, violence-novels, and bellipography. All those romances make the Second Oecumene their villains. Your hallucination is not very imaginative, as they go."

Angrily: "You believe the Hortators? You think I imposed these false memories on myself?"

Smiling: "No, beloved. Oh no, my darling. I believe in you. Would I have come here otherwise ... ?"

She straightened up and said in a more businesslike tone: "I know you. You would not falsify your memories. And if, for some reason, you did, you would have invented a better story! Living with an authoress will do that for you, I guess. But I said and I do think the hallucination imposed on you really is not very imaginative. Look at the story: The Second Oecumene hated Sophotechnology so much that it was the only thing, except for murder, their laws forbade. So who built this Nothing Sophotech?"

"Scaramouche said I did. But that was only a lie to get me to open my memory casket."

"So why do you think there is a Second Oecumene Sophotech at all... ? Why couldn't the whole thing be a lie? Why couldn't your enemies just be normal people no smarter than the rest of us?"

He said nothing.

A malicious note of humor lilted in her voice: "Or is it more flattering to your vanity to think you could have only been tricked by a superintelligence ... ?"

He said harshly: "The truth is not determined by my opinions. Nor, I should add, by any other person's. I could accuse the Hortators of blind egocentrism, for not recognizing the threat; or Atkins of cowardice, for not admitting that it is real; or I could accuse anyone of anything, who did not agree with my view. Such accusations are easy. But blind men and cowards sometimes have the truth. Perhaps by accident, but they do. And so do, sometimes, men victimized by evil, alien Sophotechs built by long-dead civilizations! So we don't discover the truth of a message by examining the man who speaks it. We examine facts. Where are the facts to support your conclusion, miss?"

She stood up, her voice musical with anger, or perhaps it was battle-joy: "Fact! The testimony of Atkins. Fact again, the testimony of Eveningstar Sophotech, who says no attack by Scaramouche or any other mannequin took place on the steps of her mausoleum. Fact the third, Gannis has been maneuvering to seize your Phoenix Exultant and sell it for scrap ever since this whole imbroglio began! He's been trying to keep you penniless; why else would he help Helion in the law case against you?"

Phaethon squinted, his head cocked to one side. "Gannis ... ?"

"Gannis of Jupiter? You know? A hundred-mind self-composition with a Sophotech who thinks just like all of him? I had my ring look up all sorts of records after I rode away from Atkins' cottage. I don't think Unmoiqhotep was acting alone. Over the last thousand years Gannis has been losing money hand over fist. He took risks in his youth, back when there was only one of him. But, once he got rich, he turned himself into a committee. To get more things done at once, I suppose. But committees always tend to more and more conservative and risk-fearing strategies. Always! (You should see some of the studies Wheel-of-Life has made on the ecology of decision-making within a fixed power structure.) But He-lion, in order to become a Peer, did the opposite. He took more and more risks, and even had a son, you, Phaethon, in order to get a mind more willing to take risks than he was:"

Phaethon turned the idea over in his mind. "Gannis? You suspect that he and the Eleemosynary Composition brain-raped me while I was in the Eleemosynary public box, is that it?"

"It explains the facts. Why else was there no evidence of the Neptunian at Eveningstar mausoleum? Why else was there no evidence of a mannequin confronting you or stabbing you on the stairs? That whole fight scene was a dream. A dream forced on you."

Could the whole fight scene with Scaramouche have been a dream? The Eleemosynary Composition had been in control of all of Phaethon's sensory inputs going into the hospice box, had been carrying all of Phaethon's motions and instructions going out. Could those have been edited?

It was hard to believe. By their very nature, Compositions had no privacy. The Eleemosynary's group-mind command structure had all its thoughts on public record. How could Eleemosynary commit a crime? Or even think about committing a crime?

Gannis, on the other hand, while there were a hundred versions of him linked in parallel, was a privately held entity, and could hide his thoughts, either from his other selves, or from the public.