John Wright - The Phoenix Exultant

In the center of the dodecahedron, not far from Phaethon, roared a turning cylinder of flame and pulsing energy. It was Vafnir. The beam of fire extended from one side of the huge chamber to the other.

Two other entities, smaller, dwarfed by Vafnir, were in the room: a dull olive-drab sphere in the Objective Aesthetic, representing the attorneys from the Bankruptcy Court; and a calitrop of black metal, with magnetic jets and manipulator gloves at each axis, surrounding brain housing into which Neo-Orpheus, or perhaps one of his partials, had downloaded, here to represent the College of Hortators.

In one hand Phaethon held up a credit ring. The circuit in the stone had memorized the numbers and locations of millions of seconds of time currency. He pointed it at the olive-drab sphere. A ray from the ring made a circuit with a point in the sphere; the currency exchange was recorded.

Within the ring also had been recorded the contracts and agreement between himself and the Neptunians, now the true owners of the starship, showing that he acted as their representative in this matter, and was accredited both as the pilot and agent of the Phoenix Exultant, and directed, after repairs and final checks were complete, to transport the vessel, with himself at the helm, to the Neptunian Embassy at Jovian Trailing Trojan.

His armor detected a rapid exchange of signals between Vafnir, Neo-Orpheus, and the Bankruptcy Attorneys, a huge volume of information compressed into a few short bursts. He could have tapped into their lines and eavesdropped on the conversation, perhaps. But he knew the gist of it. Vafnir furiously and Neo-Orpheus coldly were attempting to find some loophole, some delay, some chink in the iron plate of Phaethon's original contract with Vafnir. But that contract did not contain the normal escape clause permitting one party to be excused of his duties should the other party fall under Hortator ban. Two hundred years ago, when this contract first had been drafted, Phaethon, planning to depart from the Golden Oecumene, had foreseen no need for such a clause, and insisted on its exclusion.

"Now, then," Phaethon said aloud, "one of you is officially required, by law, to inform me that my debt to Vafnir has been settled, and that he shall perform his remaining duties under the contract. Fortunately, Vafnir's warehouses and orbital factories are already at hand directly abeam of the Phoenix Exultant; some of the smaller factories, as I recall, are actually inside the hull, for ease of construction. It should require a hundred hours, or less, to load the remaining fuel aboard, and to fit into place the hull-metal segments which you began to dismantle. I demand that the Phoenix Exultant be restored to the condition specified, cleaned and polished with no sign of tool-marks, neglect, or debris. Now, which of you is going to embrace a life of exile by telling me these things? Or, better yet, which of you is going to be arrested by the constables for failing to tell me?"

The speaker on Neo-Orpheus's housing whined to life. "The Hortator exile does not obtain against those who, by law, are compelled to treat with you, nor for comments strictly limited to legal business. Only gratuitous comments are forbidden."

Phaethon regarded the calitrop without friendliness. "That itself was a gratuitous comment. Thank you for joining me in exile."

There was something shameful about the fact that Neo-Orpheus, had, at one time, been the selfsame Orpheus who inspired the modern romantic movement; and he had led the team that invented the technology to preserve the human soul, intact, after bodily death; shameful that he should, nowadays, choose to dwell in bodies so ugly. This pyramid-shaped skeleton robot was not from the Objective Aesthetic, nor from any aesthetic at all. It was stark, functional, and utterly inhuman.

Neo-Orpheus said, "My last comment was permissible, as falling under the general umbrella of necessary comments required to conclude our business here with dispatch."

"Ah. But now I must ask, was the comment explaining that last comment gratuitous ... ? It certainly was unnecessary. Welcome to exile!"

Neo-Orpheus did not deign to respond.

Vafnir said, "Phaethon! In order to conclude the contract quickly, and in order to minimize further interactions between the two of us, I hereby not only turn over to you the materials you bought from me, but also the warehouses and the robot workers attendant thereto, base work crew, supervisors, partials, decision informata, everything. I am giving you, as a free gift, without warranty, all the operators you will need to carry out this operation yourself. They are yours. They will load and equip and polish your insane ship according to your orders, but I will not be responsible hereafter for their acts. Do you acknowledge that this will satisfy all my obligations to you under the contract... ?"

A window opened up on one of the decks to the left and showed a view from a point in space near the Phoenix Exultant. Even as he watched, he saw the flares of light darting from the warehouses, and saw the first of many spheres of fuel, like a line of pearls, beginning to emerge and slide across space toward the waiting ship.

To the port and starboard of the titanic ship, other warehouses opened their doors. A second string of pearls joined the first, then a third, then a score, then a hundred. The vast bays and fuel docks of the Phoenix Exultant stirred to life and opened to receive the incoming gifts.

The running lights of the ship lit up. Red to port. Green to starboard. Flashing white along the keel. The ship had come to life again.

"Do not imagine that your victory over us is achieved, Phaethon," Neo-Orpheus said in a cold voice.

Phaethon said, "But, my dear sir, I am not imagining it at all. I see it clearly."

In the window, at that moment, orbital tugs appeared, guiding the mile-long slabs of golden adamantium, one after another, toward the rents and gaps in the vast armored hull.

Silently steadily, ton upon countless ton of material, fuel, ship-brains, biomaterial, and the vast expanse of hull segments, began falling like gentle snow toward the golden doors opened so wide to receive them.

Phaethon said in his heart: Come to life, my Phoenix, that you may bring life to lifeless worlds. How could anyone fear so noble and so fine a ship as you?

It was only then that he noticed how much like a spear blade she was in truth, how sleek, how beautiful, how deadly. He realized how it would be easy, quite easy, magnificently easy and awe-inspiring, to use her world-creating power to destroy worlds. (And it did not please him that he took such pleasure at that thought.)

And, now that the teamsters and longshoremen robots were his and his alone, unlike material from the Phoenix Exultant (owned, now, by Neoptolemous) he could send them where he liked and to what task he liked.

A mental command was all he needed to turn legal ownership of half a hundred of them over to Daphne. No matter what else might happen to her, she would at least have several tugs and smallboats at her disposal, with their fuel, life support, and ship-brains. She now, at least, could depart the station in something roomier than a canister. And he could depart to the Phoenix Exultant. His ship.

Phaethon hung in space, a reaction lance in hand, poetry in his heart, a vision of gold in his eyes. He was about thirty kilometers aft of the main superstructure, watching from a hundred points of view at once as the last of the loading was completed.

Whatever the law might say, she was his ship, his dream made real, in golden adamantium, antimatter, energy, carbon fiber, molecularly strengthened steel.

Because he had no mentality support, he had to carry on his inspection of the great vessel using the protocols originally designed for refueling in distant star systems.