John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

Phaethon hovered in midair above the deck of the thought-shop. Ironjoy stood on the burnt decks, still damaged from the explosions, looking back and forth. No expression showed on his immobile features. The- deck was deserted.

Phaethon was able to maintain his position aloft because the levitation array, which had been lowered from orbit to a position over India was near enough for the flying-harness he had constructed inside his armor to grapple and use.

Ironjoy said, "I do not consider our contract to have been carried out in a satisfactory fashion. Specifically, you promised to return my shop intact (I note that it has been pulverized by heavy energy discharges) and my people unharmed (I note that they are absent.) I suspect that you have come into some money, or have made some other arrangement to depart. I conclude that, should I choose to sue you in a court of law for the breach of this contract, and insist on the specific performance of the terms on which we agreed, your plans to depart would be hindered considerably. I have recently learned to have great respect for the power of Oecumene law to compel obedience."

Phaethon had to be careful of his money. Old-Woman-of-the-Sea, as it turned out, owned a cargo canister, one of hundreds she used to own, back when she had been making regular launches to Venus. Notor-Kotok had bought the use of an orbital railgun from a deviant willing to defy the Hortators. Phaethon could adjust his body to withstand the immense launch pressure that would otherwise make the cargo canister utterly unfit for shipping a human body; he could adjust his brain to sleep throughout the long fall toward the sun. Since the planned orbit was sunward, "all downhill" as old spacers liked to say, the fuel cost (almost all of which would be spent at the initial boost) would be inexpensive.

Inexpensive by space-shipping standards, that is. Phaethon's income from his flying-suit patent was not enormous, and his pay from the Neptunians (which mostly consisted of buying the rest of his debt back from Vafnir, to give the Neptunians clear title) would not arrive till he arrived at Mercury Equilateral. There were not many corners he could cut.

The negotiations did not take long, and were not entirely favorable to Phaethon.

Ironjoy judged Phaethon's reluctance to a nicety, or perhaps the Demeter tapestry had somehow recorded the conversations Phaethon held, less than an hour past, with Notor-Kotok and the Neptunians, and knew exactly how much currency Phaethon had to spare. Or perhaps it was merely that Ironjoy had much more practice than Phaethon did at bargaining without any Sophotechnic advice.

In the end, Ironjoy no doubt had more than enough to restore his shop to operating levels. Phaethon felt more than a qualm of distaste for himself, erecting this villain once again to be lord and master of whatever addicted and desperate unfortunates might fall into his hands.

But there was little Phaethon could do at this point.

Phaethon said, "The files and brain-spaces that have not been destroyed are still in order, and I have cleaned and reconnected them, restored your search engines, and modified the hierarchies in your housecoat to free up several hundred operation-cycles of memory space." And he transmitted back the codes and authorizations, turning control of the thought-shop once more to Ironjoy.

"If we have no further business, sir..." said Phaethon, preparing to leave. He had agreed with the remnant of the Bellipotent Composition to rendezvous. Bellipotent's airship could carry him back to Lake Victoria, where he could ascend the infinite tower (if he could find passage-perhaps in a masquerade disguise?) and try to reach the section of the ring-city where the Mother-of-the-Sea's cargo capsule was stored.

"But we do. One last brief thing," said Ironjoy. "I would thank you not to leave your messages cluttering my thought-shop holding space."

Phaethon was distracted. "Messages ... ?" Then he recalled that he had dumped his secretarial program, and not thought, himself, of looking for any messages since his last session with the Neptunians. "An oversight, sir. Can you forward it to my armor's internal channel?"

"For a small fee."

"That seems a trifle unkind, sir, considering that..."

Ironjoy jerked all four hands at the sky, an odd but alarming gesture. "Unkind! You have ruined my thoughts and hopes and life! A pathetic life, by your manor-born standards, a cruel and thin life, but it was mine and the only one I had. The Afloats have been taken to some junkyard behind a Red pleasure-garden, with me not there to protect them from overindulgence, or to nurse the sick and aged. There is no work for them there; there is nothing for me here. Even should another flock of Afloats be dropped here, I have lost my zest for my work, my talent for forcing obedience and fear. Your vile Curia and their mind-tricks have seen to that. I have seen my life through other's eyes and recoiled in disgust..."

Now he lowered his hands, muttering: "I would some power could grant this gift to me-never again to see myself as others see me."

But Ironjoy, with a shrug of disgust, and without collecting any fee, now, for some reason, made the transmission-gesture, and passed the message file to Phaethon.

Phaethon was thinking: Why should I feel pity for this most wretched of men? No injustice had been done to him. All Ironjoy's ills were of his own making.

And yet. "You could trifle with your mind, using activators and redactors from your own thought-shop, and put yourself back into the state of mind you were in before the Curia forced you to experience your victims' lives."

"Is this some sort of test or quiz? You know I shall not do that."

"Why not?"

Ironjoy started to turn away, but then stopped, turned, and answered the question. "If I were now as I was then, I would gladly change my self to remain as I was then; but I am now as I am now. The me that I am now has no desire to be any other me. Isn't that the fundamental nature of the self?"

"If you judge by emotion only, perhaps. Logic suggests that certain types of personalities are more self-consistent than others; and morality decrees that certain traits and thoughts and habits are superior to others, no matter what our preferences and appetites might say."

"What has your philosophy to do with me? You are not content to destroy my life, now you must critique it? Don't you have other business elsewhere?"

"I have business here, and with you. What will you pay as a finder's fee, if I can find three hundred workers, already trained in your methods and familiar with your work, and also find a customer, willing to pay sixty seconds per line-cycle, doing checking and format translation? The whole project should include between one-hundred twenty and one-hundred fifty subjective man-hours of work."

Ironjoy touched his chest and tuned his speaking machine to a sarcastic tone: "You would make me the wealthiest man on Death Row."

"I would like twenty percent commission on net profit, paid in advance based on standard actuarial estimates, with cost adjustments to be made later, standard intervening interest rates applied to the overpayment or underpayment. In return, at my own expense, I will transport here Drusillet and a little over half of the Afloats. She is the one who sent me the message. She asked me to tell you her terms: they will not work here unless you continue to enforce the policies and rules I started, including sobriety tests, job training, full-value resale of unused memories, and a dress code. I have no idea how she did it, and I am not even sure why she did it, but she has convinced about half of the original Afloats there in that Red pleasure-junkyard you were talking about, to come back here. The people willing to hire them are the Neptunians. We need the software aboard the Phoenix Exultant reconstructed so that personalities of the Tritonic Neuroform Composition can integrate into the ship's onboard mindscape. Considering that, by your own admission, your life is destroyed if I do not help you, I think twenty percent is a small price to pay. Besides, you-as-you-are-now needs a chance to do some good work to redeem yourself."