John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

Phaethon said, "I don't see how Eleemosynary could have been a conspirator; nor do I see how anyone (anyone equipped with technology known to the Golden Oecumene) could have manipulated my brain while I was in the Eleemosynary hospice box without Eleemosynary noticing it."

"When you closed your armor, you were cut off from all outside influence. Eleemosynary could not have detected what was going on inside you at that time. Suppose a brain-redaction had taken place then?"

"I would have been cut off from any brain-redactor as well."

"Unless you had it inside your armor with you."

"I was carrying it with me, is that what you mean, and then it activated?"

"How is that different from a memory casket set on a timer?"

"Are we talking about a piece of hardware, physically inside the armor? Atkins was the only person who touched it. He put a probe inside before I went into the courthouse. But... No, wait, that is ridiculous. I would have found any hardware during my trip down the tower. I completely inventoried everything in my armor, from helm to heel, more than once. Unless it dissolved itself after one use.. ?"

"I am thinking it was a thoughtware virus, existing only in your mind. Perhaps someone fed it to you through the Middle Dreaming, earlier."

Was it possible?

Perhaps with a clever logic-tree, such a virus could have added false memories one at a time, while he was speaking (or thought he was speaking) to Scaramouche, and different variations of Scaramouche's responses might have been prerecorded, each variation anticipating slightly different reactions in him. A stored semi-intelligent program could have unfolded in his consciousness, feeding false signals into his senses, or even directly into his cortex, with no intervening medium. No outside source would detect the "invasion" because Phaethon was carrying the invading program inside him. Daphne's theory also would explain why neither Rhadamanthus nor Eleemosynary, later, had any memory of the virus-civilization which Phaethon remembered seeing attack all three of them. There had been no such superviruses, no attack powerful enough to fool Rhadamanthus. Instead, a very simple chain of memories, reporting that an attack had already taken place, were introduced into Phaethon, then activated.

But when had it happened? Before he climbed into the public box at the Eleemosynary hospice? Before that he had been at the courthouse. Had Atkins done it? Before the courthouse he had been in the Rhadamanthine thoughtspace, at tea, talking with Daphne, and Rhadamanthus had been running his sense-filter, and would have prevented any thought-virus from entering from the Middle Dreaming.

Unless her diary had been the carrier to introduce the virus...?

The meddling with his thoughts must have been complete before he opened his memory casket. Because, after that, he had been in Helion's section of the mansion-mind, and, after that, at the Hortator Inquest.

Or had it been complete? Perhaps something introduced earlier had still been operating. A Trojan-horse program of moderate skill could have interfered with Phaethon's attempt to download a copy of his consciousness into the public channel when he had been testifying at the Inquest. Instead of the true copy Phaethon had tried to send, a pre-recorded false version could have gone out, fed into the channel Phaethon had opened. That version was false from the beginning, and no magic supertechnology needed to be postulated to explain how records could be altered while Nebuchednezzar was reading them, simply because they had not been altered at that time. They had been concocted long before, and loaded into Phaethon's subconscious whenever the original brain-rape had taken place. (But when could that have been?)

And why Gannis?

He asked it aloud: "Why Gannis?"

"Because Gannis hates Helion. He always has. It's always been the false sun fighting the true sun; Jupiter versus Sol."

"Why?"

"The Solar Array, in less than four centuries, will be large enough to circle the equator of the sun. It will be the largest single piece of engineering ever designed. Why wouldn't He-lion put in a supercollider at that point? To you and me the difference between a small, false-dwarf sun like Burning Jupiter, and a main-sequence G-type star like Sol may be hard to grasp, like the difference between a million and a billion. But Helion, at that time, could outproduce Gannis's metal supply, could more than triple Vafnir's antimatter output, and so on and so forth. Jupiter will be exhausted of hydrogen fuel long before Sol-look at the difference in size! And, long before that, some planetary engineer-I think it was always meant to be you-would have to move the moons of dying Jupiter into new orbits around the parent Sun."

"Impossible. How could Gannis get away with it? The first noetic reading made of his mind would reveal his crime."

Daphne shrugged. "I think he had been hoping Helion would help you, or follow you into exile, or at least raise such a stink that the Peers would withdraw their invitation to elevate Helion to join them. Then, at the Grand Transcendence in December, it is not Helion's dream which takes the center stage and forefront of the minds of men, but Gannis's. Afterward, long afterward, perhaps, Gannis would be found out. But I suppose parts of his mind don't know about the crime, and they will carry on after the evil Gannis is punished. But in any case, it will be too late for Helion's dream by then. After a Transcendence, people get so wrapped up in the unity of racial thought, you know how it takes them a few hundred years to begin trusting their own judgment again; and by that time, Helion may be broke. With your death, Helion certainly will be brokenhearted."

Phaethon opened his mouth to utter an objection, but then closed it. Because the theory did make sense. It make a lot more sense than believing he was being chased, for incomprehensible reasons, by agents from a long-dead colony one thousand light-years away. Instead, the oldest reason for crime known to man-jealousy-came from someone like Gannis- a real person. The danger was understandable, human, natural.

And he knew how untrustworthy Gannis was. Had he not already betrayed Phaethon once? And yet... and yet...

"This is precisely the sort of thing Nothing would like to get me to believe, if all this has been arranged to trick me," said Phaethon.

Daphne rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. You are going to disbelieve a believable theory not because it is unbelievable, but because it is not?" "Er. Say that again ... ?"

"I don't need to. This Nothing Sophotech is your superstition. A paranoiac who sees conspiracies everywhere, says the lack of evidence only proves the conspiracy was successful. A man who believes in fairies, when he doesn't see them, says that this proves that fairies are invisible!"

"Reasoning by analogy is like filling balloons with liquid helium. It won't fly."

She said: "Then stick to the evidence. What can you prove?" "I can prove nothing. What we are trying to find out here is whether or not my ability to gather and to ponder proof- in other words, my mind and memory-has been compromised. How does one prove that the ability itself to prove things has not been distorted? What evidence can prove the evidence itself has not been tampered with?"

She said, "You're getting ridiculous. All you need to look for, in this case, is independent confirmation. Atkins does not agree with you, Rhadamanthus does not agree with you, Eveningstar does not agree with you, and the Eleemosynary Composition does not agree with you. You have not found a single shred of independent confirmation so far. But you have that mobile noetic circuit right there in your hand. It will tell you if the memories you have are true or false, and when any false memories were put into you, and how. So what are you waiting for? What are you afraid of?" Phaethon said nothing, but stared at her carefully. Daphne put her hands on her hips, her mouth a circle of astonishment. Then she cried: "How dare you! You think I'm an imitation Daphne sent here by the Nothing with a booby-trapped box just to brain-rape you! Good stinking grief! What do I have to do to prove who I am to you?"