John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

But why hadn't it destroyed the noetic unit earlier? There was only one answer: It could not afford to let Daphne, or anyone else, get any firm evidence that the Silent Ones existed. A noetic reader that had been clearly and obviously sabotaged would be evidence confirming Phaethon's story, just as much as if the working reader had examined Phaethon and discovered the origin of his false memories.

In each circumstance, the Silent Ones had attempted to avoid detection.

All this flashed though his thoughts in a suspended moment of emergency time. Then, over the next microsecond, he ran through a complete system-check, attempted four different ways to log on to the mentality, to send out emergency signals, or to make any sort of contact with any external circuits or networks. Everything was blocked; all channels were white with static.

Another long microsecond was spent while he made what tests he could on the barrier, sending pulses out from his armor and analyzing the echoes. He attempted to determine its energy levels, its field geometry, its resonating properties. From the reactions, he realized that this was not merely meant to block outgoing energies, but also to trace them.

This fact implied certain obvious conclusions, and suggested a possible course of action. But was that action wise?

Here was the monster, wretched and sad creature that it was, invulnerable to Phaethon's most fierce attack, with all its weapons ready, looming above, threatening Daphne with death, and him with worse than death. But was Phaethon in a weak position now, or a strong one?

The emergency persona recognized that it was unable to make this assessment, which required a value judgment, and so it shut down and dumped Phaethon back into the flow of normal time.

Immediately his fear for Daphne's safety rose to seize him.

"You callous bastard," Phaethon whispered. "You coldblooded, calculating, ruthless son of a bitch."

The monster said, "Your response is not appropriate. We once again demand your surrender. Otherwise the love-object dies in pain."

"I wasn't talking about you," muttered Phaethon.

Daphne, from behind him, said fiercely, "Don't let it win. If it wants the armor, destroy the armor first. If it wants you, kill yourself first. If it tries to use me to control you, shoot me first. This thing cannot win unless you let it!"

Phaethon drew a deep breath. He had tried all the weapons he could build, but that had proven futile. Any agent Nothing Sophotech would send out would obviously be equipped with the best defenses a superintelligent study of Phaethon's armor could predict. What could Phaethon attempt which had not been predicted ... ?

There was one possibility. He was not pleased, but, for Daphne's sake, he saw he had to make the attempt.

Phaethon said, "I will not surrender to you, since you are an insane creature, and I cannot trust that you will keep your word. I am a manorial. I have been born and raised by machines, and I trust only machines. Put me in contact with your Nothing Sophotech. Only if your Sophotech gives me assurance that Daphne will be kept alive and safe and free to go, will I believe in your good faith, and surrender."

The creature said nothing, but its tentacles twitched. Phaethon tried to guess what thought-process might be going on inside that headless skeleton-body. Yet surely it would not regard this request as unusual or strange, coming from him. Everyone knew the manor-born trusted only Sophotechs.

Behind him, Daphne hissed, "Lover, have you lost your mind? Is that helmet cutting off the oxygen to your brain? Do you think it's easy for me to stand here waiting to be shot and to keep telling you to fight that thing? How about a little support for my position here!?"

Phaethon said harshly to her: "My dear, forgive me, but you have read far too many of those romantic fictions of yours. In your type of stories, heroes always prevail because they are good, not because they are correct. But for engineers, reality requires that you solve problems only within the context of what circumstances and available resources permit. It involves trade-offs. It involves compromise. Sometimes the solution isn't pretty, and falls far short of any high ideal. But whatever solution it is that works, that's the one we choose."

To the creature, he said, "You can erase her memory of this event, so that your secrecy will be safe, but I insist that she be set free."

The monster said, "You will service our needs because need is all we have. We have nothing. You have no right to bargain with us or to make demands. Your love, your notions of right and wrong, makes you susceptible. Because you are weak, you must obey."

Phaethon said, "Weak... ? Me ... ? Why in the world do people keep telling me that?" Impatience crept into his voice: "Listen to me, you pathetic vomit-mass of psychotic self-loathing, unless I myself surrender, and freely open this armor, and freely discard it, you have no power to hurt me. None! It is you who has no room to bargain, you who cannot negotiate. You were instructed by your master to capture me and my armor intact. You will fail, and fail utterly, unless I choose otherwise. Very well: you have heard the conditions of my choice. Send a signal to your master: I want confirmation from the Nothing Sophotech itself."

The area was beginning to fill with smoke. The creature stood still, looming high in the darkness, silhouetted dimly against the few dying fires Phaethon's weapons had lit on the far side of the deck, and by the glint from Daphne's ring.

The creature said, "Very well. The signal is being sent..."

It came from somewhere over Phaethon's shoulder and whispered right past his ear. Whatever it was, it must have been traveling faster than the speed of sound, because he heard it only after the monster vanished in a moment of light. Smoking, toppling, the scattered blue-white bone-things seemed to fly apart, as if trying to escape. The dazzling after-echoes of the light seemed to close in around them. Perhaps there was a very quiet hissing noise. And then the blue-white substance was consumed without a trace.

For less than a moment, like an after-echo, a vibration or haze flashed across the deck and the overhead panels, each place the creature had stepped or dripped or touched.

Darkness. All was still.

Only then was Phaethon aware of the needle-thin ray of light striking him from behind. He turned. There was a small melted hole, like a pinprick, piercing the black diamond parasol wall behind him, just above the railings. The hole was so small that, had it not been utterly black inside here, and admitting some little light from outside, it would have passed unnoticed.

Phaethon grimaced. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," he muttered angrily.

Daphne coughed and climbed to her feet and looked around blankly. "What's going on? You were only pretending to give up, I hope. Does this mean you are a hero after all... ?"

Phaethon said, "Not me. I'm just the dupe. The bait. And, as for that..." He nodded toward the empty air where the enemy had just been standing.

"It is dead, I hope ... ? I've never seen a dead thing before, not permanently dead. But I thought there would be a corpse or something. There is always a corpse in mystery fiction."

"The weapon he used involved an energy I haven't seen before. Whatever it was did not even mar the deck where the creature was standing, or touch the pavilion surface behind it."

"He used ... ? He who ... ?" But then she began coughing again.

Phaethon stepped to where he had seen Daphne's horse nosing among the pavilion surfaces. There. The icons and thought-ports were stained with soot, but he saw the wires running to the lock-icon. Once again, a trick anyone with Golden Oecumene technology could have played.