John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

Phaethon organized his armor to emit several types of discharge, calculated to burn flesh and overload circuitry. His mass-drivers now could sweep the area with brutal force. The creature loomed tall in the darkness. Phaethon raised his hands and focused aiming elements.

Yet he was reluctant merely to shoot down this creature in cold blood, while it was talking. It did not sound sane. Was there some way to discover its origin, its motives?

Dryly, Phaethon said, "Your offer is quite tempting, sir, but I fear I must decline. Frankly, I fail to see how a life of endless and pointless torture benefits either yourself or myself. Surely there is something else you want for yourself... ?"

The rearing creature said in a leaden monotone: "Self is illusion. To seek benefit is selfishness. Seek nothing, achieve nothing, be nothing. True being is non-being."

Phaethon was tempted to open fire. What was this annoying, pathetic, hopeless creature hoping to achieve? Was this talk merely delay while other agents or elements made other attempts?

Phaethon need only think the proper thought-command, and he could log on to the mentality in an instant, and tell the world what was happening here. All the secrecy of the Nothing would be nullified.

But would Phaethon live long enough to tell? Was a virus in the mentality waiting to block any outgoing communications he might attempt? This whole clumsy attack, this final face-to-face confrontation, this emissary of meaningless horror, all this might be merely ah elaborate ploy to force him to log on.

He simply was not sure what to do. Phaethon said, "Explain your conduct. Why attempt force? Violent interaction is mutually self-destructive; peaceful cooperation is mutually beneficial."

"To benefit the self is wrong. It produces pleasure, which is gross corruption. Pleasure produces life, which damages the ecology and is abhorrent to nature, and life produces joy-of-life, which traps the mind in material reality, imprisons the false-self in logic. But once the state of mind beyond all logic is imposed, then there are no definitions, no boundaries, no limits, and endless freedom, the freedom of nothingness, is present. This state cannot be explained or described to you, since you do not exist, and since all descriptions are false. Your brain will be reconstructed. You will be absorbed. Submit."

There was silence in the darkness. Phaethon still could not bring himself to shoot a self-aware being, even an enemy, during negotiations. But did that mean he would have to wait until the alien threatened him again? That would be worse than foolish. His duty was to log on, and to warn the world, even if it cost him his life. Doubt made him hesitate. This was not the kind of problem Phaethon had practiced to solve. He knew how to solve engineering problems, problems made of rational magnitudes, definite structures, clear goals. But this ... ?

A child, or a madman, who was irrational, was a figure to invoke fond patience, or pity. But when that same irrationality controlled the weapons and science of a civilization as great and as powerful as the Silent Oecumene once had been, that was a figure of horror.

Yet how could such unreason, even so, be taken seriously? This was the silliest and the least persuasive negotiator it had ever been Phaethon's bad fortune to meet. There were logical contradictions in its philosophy a schoolboy could see through.

What could it want? And what did one say to such a creature ... ?

Phaethon plucked up his courage and spoke. "Forgive me, sir, but I am going to have to ask you to turn yourself in to the nearest constabulary. Please surrender; I have no wish to harm you. You are quite insane, and so there is no point in arguing with you, but I'm sure our noumenal science can restore you to sanity after a brief redaction."

"You admit, finally, the truth of our proposition," issued the headless horse-creature. "Logic is futile. Truth must be imprinted on captive brains by force. But our truth is not your truth. There is no common ground between us, no understanding, no compromise, no trust. There is nothing between us."

The creature's leaden voice ground to silence.

Phaethon said in a voice of cold bewilderment: "But then why did you ask to negotiate? Or, for that matter, why do anything at all? If your life is so horrible and irrational and meaningless, put an end to it! I won't hinder you, I assure you of that. Quite frankly, it would relieve me of the upsetting chore of doing it for you."

This seemed to be the first thing Phaethon said that produced an emotional response from the creature, for the many tentacles began to writhe and lash, and fragments of material, hooks and weapon-barrels, began to worm their way out through the steaming horseflesh of the chest and haunches with agitated twitches. Blood streamed down the horse's fetlocks and stained the deck. It took little steps back and forth, to the left and right, like a comic little dance, rear hoofs clanging, and the tall upper body swayed, forelegs curling and uncurling.

The two stood facing each other, a man in bright armor, a smoldering and faceless horse-creature, stepping and swaying, looming like a black shadow.

Phaethon took a step back, made certain all his new-made weaponry was aimed and primed and ready. He drew a tense breath.

Neither one of them fired.

The creature planted its rear hoofs again, raised its many arms, and froze in place. The creature's voice, speaking in a deeper tone, came forth: "We have imprinted our over-self into the internal fields of a black hole, beyond the event horizon. In the center of the black hole, there, all irrationalities are reality, all boundary conditions reach infinities and infinitesimals. Logic stops. No rational signal can reach out from the event horizon to communicate with those who have not been absorbed. You are beyond my event horizon. You still exist in the universe limited by logic, selfishness, perception, thought. You will enter us, and be embraced, enter our singularity, and all distinctions between self and other shall cease. You shall cease. We shall cease. Nothing shall triumph."

Phaethon thought: But then what in the world do you want? Why have you been attacking me? Yet he did not bother to say anything aloud. It would have been futile.

The was a bob of light from behind him. Phaethon saw Daphne, a broken cot leg in one hand, like a club, step up the ladder to peer out over the deck. The ring on her finger was producing a thin beam of light. "Phaethon?! What's wrong with you? Haven't you destroyed that creature yet?"

"Daphne!! Stay back!" Phaethon made a noise of frustration and fear and stepped between Daphne and the monster, his back to her, spreading his arms as if to shield her. He was sure that in one of her spy-dramas or bellipographic simulations, the heroine was supposed to use a chair leg or something as a truncheon to beat off the computer-generated figments.

Was she insane, to come up here? His agonized and bitter thought was that Daphne had no real experience of emergencies, and could not judge degrees of danger.

The horse-thing reared back even farther, and its spine elongated, pushing its upper body higher yet in a bloody convulsion of ripping horseflesh. Blood gushed every way across the deck. Two of the tendrils springing from the horse's neck doubled in size, and reached far left and far right, so as to be able to point down at Daphne. Whichever way Phaethon moved so as to block the weapon with his body, left or right, the creature would still have a clear line of fire the other way.

The monster's monotone came: "Surrender, or I destroy the love-object."

" 'Love-object'?!" Exclaimed Daphne in a voice of outrage. "Phaethon, who is this thing?" And then, when the light from her ring fell across the dripping mass of the monster, she gave out a tear-choked gasp: "My horse! My poor Sunset! What have you done to my horse?!"