John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

The Silent Oecumene technology might be different from that of the Golden Oecumene. Nonetheless, in general, it was safe to assume that the technology level still had to be roughly equal, since a godlike superiority in technology would have permitted the Silent Ones to disregard any need for precaution or secrecy.

Therefore, it was safe to assume that normal principles of science and engineering applied. The Silent Ones could not motivate their starship without discharges of energy sufficient to move the ship's mass across the intervening distance.

And also, even if the Nothing Sophotech could be housed in a frame physically much smaller than huge electrophotonic matrices of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs, the energy density, and the energy required to perform a respectable Sophotech-level number of operations-per-second, would still give it a large mass-energy reading. The pseudo-neutronium inside the noetic unit he was holding, for example, could have been detected from orbit by weakly interacting particle ranging-and-detection gear.

Where could one put a body that large, or put a starship, without the Earthmind detecting either?

Daphne said, "You're not talking, lover. That means you're thinking."

"Shouldn't I be?"

A feminine sigh floated in the candle-lit gloom. "You should be thinking about hurrying up, getting a noetic reading, proving that you are right, and getting home in time for a real comfortable night, including a warm pool, a communion, a mensal performance, and a walk in the Eveningstar Garden of the New Senses. The Non-Apotheosis School was going to surface back into human thoughtspace from their daring sub-transcendence tomorrow, and everyone says they will be bringing back Para-artistic phenomena from deep in the Earth-mind, miniaturized and recalculated to make sense to our neuroforms. I thought it would be a much better way to spend an afternoon than sitting here on a rusting barge, watching each other undergo the aging process. Can't we go home? All this poverty and trash here is beginning to depress me. Too much like my folks' old Stark place on the Reservation."

She was clutching her elbows and shivering. One of the candles on the porthole sill behind her had begun to gutter out. She had half-turned and was watching it die.

Phaethon knew she was thinking morbid thoughts. The Starks had not connected their child to any noumenal immortality circuit, nor even told her that such a thing as immortality was possible. Daphne had suffered more than one bad accident as a child, falling from trees, overturning boats, being trampled by antique walking-statues; for she had led an active life. She found out from a wandering confabulator, a Jongleur from the Warlock Benevolent Mischief School, about Orphic reincarnation banks: and she had never forgiven the mad risk her primitivist parents had taken with her life.

The bright flame sputtered, gave off a greater light than before, swayed, failed, and vanished. A slender tail of smoke rushed upward.

"Will you just hurry up and get us out of here?" said Daphne.

Phaethon said: "Darling, don't be afraid."

She spoke without turning her head. "Why not?" came a bitter reply. "You are."

There was an odd sharpness to her voice. He said: "Just what do you mean by that?"

Daphne turned, picked up the child slate, touched the screen. The light from the slate shone up from her chin, and threw the shadow of her nose across one eye. "I would not have had to go into exile, and come all the way out here, or get that portable reader from Aurelian, or do any of those things, if you had just had the common sense to log on to the network and get a noetic reading from Rhadamanthus or from any public contracts channel! You even read a self-consideration analysis of your own psychometrics, and it told you (it told you!) that your fear of logging on was unnatural and out of characterfor you. It should have been obvious that it was an imposed fear, imposed from outside. If you had half the brains you pretend, you would not have needed me to come by and rescue you!"

"You read my self-analysis?! That is private material!"

"Oh, come on. I am your wife, you know. I've communed with you. I've been you."

"I would not go through your diary without asking!"

"Oh, really? What if the wake-up code for the old version of me was there? Or are you only willing to break into private mausoleums, batter constables, fight Atkins, and try to kidnap sleeping women?"

"I-well-you make a good point, I suppose. But still you should not-"

"What, are you afraid I'll come across your private sexual fantasies about making me dress up in a pony suit and horse-breaking me? I have to admit, I sort of like that one ..."

"You are changing the subject, miss!"

"Demoted back to 'miss,' eh? Well, don't worry, hero. If I die in exile, I wouldn't be telling anyone your secrets." She tossed the slate back onto the cot with a negligent flick of her wrist. "I suppose it doesn't matter whether you use that damn noetic reader or not. I can tell you what it will say."

"What?"

"The false memories were imposed through the Middle Dreaming. You were standing near the courthouse, and a friend of Unmoiqhotep's, one of the Cacophiles, got you to accept some sort of quick-read file. You were on public courthouse ground. You must have been using public server support for your sense-filter, the same kind of low-budget public-works thing Atkins was complaining that Unmoiqhotep had cracked. Right?"

"Y-yes. But why do you conclude that..."

"Simple. You were brain-raped. It could not have happened when or at any time before you were sourced through Rhadamanthus, or the mansion-mind would have detected it, or before your trial, for then the Curia noetic reading would have detected it. And it didn't happen after you entered the Eleemosynary hospice box, because the concierge would have detected it. So whom did you meet after you left the trial and before you went to the hospice? The Cacophiles."

She pointed at the slate glowing on the cot. "And the self-consideration analysis even told you that something was making you not want to think about the Cacophiles. It told you. You ignored it. And don't give me this 'how can I know anything if my brain has been altered?' garbage! Look for the confirming evidence! Look at your own damn self-analysis! Look at basic Deception Theory you learned as an Apprentice, 'for every false-to-facts system there must be at least one self-inconsistency value' remember? It's all lies, and you should be able to see through them, Phaethon! There is no Silent Oecumene and no spies and no booby-trap! And there is Nothing! I mean there isn't a Nothing. No such thing as Nothing. Demons in Heaven! Boy, do I sound stupid even trying to say it!" And there were tears in her swollen eyes, and she began to laugh, and her face was flushed with anger, and Phaethon somehow thought she looked lovely anyway.

"Don't get upset. Remember your self-control."

"Bugger that! I've left the Silver-Grey. Reds get hysterical. It's our privilege!"

"Be that as it may, your theory simply does not cover all the facts. Why did someone put a dream-block in my head to prevent me from thinking or dreaming about the Second Oecumene? If it wasn't the Silent Ones, then who?"

"Perhaps the block was merely intended that you should not dream about anything. Maybe they wanted you to die of dream deprivation before anyone examined you noetically and discovered the fraud. Why the Second Oecumene? I don't know. The subject matter may have been chosen at random, or they may have chosen the most upsetting image from your subconscious, or the thought-virus may have mutated in operation. Chaos happens, darling. Some things aren't planned."

"Someone sent me a threatening message just earlier this evening, through Daughter-of-the-Sea."