John Wright - The Golden Age

"Good heavens!" Phaethon checked his sense-filter again. The penguin and its contrail were illusions, existing only in mentality. But Phaethon's contrail was a real object. "How am I doing this? Flying without a suit, I mean." He checked the properties value on his sense-filter again. It was real.

"If master would care to direct his attention upward, in the extremely high frequency range? ..."

"I see a latticework of energy lines across the sky, from horizon to horizon.... A levitation array? But the scale is grandiose. It extends for miles. Ah... hundreds of miles. Was this all built since last night?"

"It was constructed in orbit and lowered into place, young master. A surprise for the guests!" The penguin pointed with a stubby black wing.

He continued: "The wire is buoyant, made of a newly developed material of great tensile strength and high conductivity. The dome extends over the entire Celebration grounds, from the forty-fifth to the fiftieth parallel. If the dome were permitted to relax to its natural hemispheric shape, the apex would be in the stratosphere. It is by no means the largest artificial structure on Earth—the Antarctic Winter Garden is much larger; but it will reduce the expense and trouble of air transport. I deduce the Earth-mind's Avatar introduced microscopic assemblers into your mannequin-frame—I see traces running from your forehead into your central body— and used them to construct magnetic anchor points and induction generators. A present man could do the same with a heavy jacket of special material."

"I'm impressed. But you sound sort of nasal, Rhadaman-thus, even for a penguin."

"It saddens me to see a way of life I like pass on, even though I am not myself alive. The new ease of air transport may decrease the advantages of telepresentation, and, over the next four centuries, reduce the prestige of the various manorial and cryptic ways of life. Including mansions like me. Heh. Ironic, isn't it sir?"

"What's ironic?"

"That Earthmind should give the technology to you. Not of the levitation array, of course, I just mean the anchor-and-antennae system which allows one to fly with it."

"Give? Did you say give?"

"Yes. I've examined the legal channels, and there is no patent on the hardware, no copyright on the software. I've

taken the liberty of making out an intellectual property claim in your name, sir, giving you copyright ownership."

"Do you think She is a testing me to see if I will suppress the technology?"

"Sir, the human mind may not easily grasp the difference between a million and a trillion, but if I have the honor of being able to calculate and correlate a million times faster than a human brain; and if the Earthmind calculates at a trillion times your rate; then, quite honestly, sir, She is as incomprehensible to me as I must seem, at times, to you. I have not the faintest idea why She does anything."

The one Peer who had not spoken was an emissary for the Communication and Financial planning subroutine of the Eleemosynary Composition. The Eleemosynary was a group-mind with thousands of members, founded during the turmoils of the Fifth Mental Structure, with memory chains and records reaching back over eighty thousand years. The Eleemosynary Composition was one of the first to include peoples of different nervous system structures into one combination. In the far past, he-they had been a powerful political force, one of the founding architects of the Sixth Mental Structure and the age of the machine-minds. Now, all political power evaporated, the Eleemosynary Composition made his-their fortunes in interpretation and translation and arbitration between different groups and mind-sets in the Golden Oec-umene.

The Emissary was embodied and costumed as a figure from Eleemosynary mythopoetry, a winged-lion chimera who wore three heads: monkey, hawk, and serpent. Each head held a separate brain, one of each of the three neuroforms of which the Eleemosynary group-mind was composed: the basic, the Invariant, and the Warlock. (Helion saw that, like Helion, the Emissary viewed the room from the other peers' viewpoints, but, unlike him, he-they did not have any private viewpoint

of his-their own. Also unlike him, his-their nervous systems could understand the views coming from Kes Sennec and Wheel-of-Life.)

The Emissary said, "Whoever wishes to serve the Good should embrace long-term as well as short-term considerations into his councils. In less than one hundred billion years, Sol passes to other phases of stellar decay, and no longer will be serviceable. Forethought requires that provision be made to evacuate, but civilization not be jarred or disturbed. Technologies should be developed to accommodate the movement of all worlds and world-habitats elsewhere, social institutions adapted to preserve peace and orderliness, with philosophies to supply ideological justification. Chaos, violence, terror, should be, at all costs, avoided. Only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Humbly, it is wondered if, in the vision presented by Peer Helion, society, by the time star colonization is needed, will have sufficient genius, foresight, and resolve to attempt the abyss between the stars. Stable societies are not known for these virtues."

"You see?" said Ao Aoen, "The great Eleemosynary Composition is willing to oppose a society of strict conformity; and he-they are the very soul of union and unselfishness! What does that make us, we who urge the plan?"

"There is, perhaps, misinterpretation," replied the Emissary, turning his-their three heads to stare at Ao Aoen. "It was meant to say that the star-colonization question should be raised long after Helion's efforts to extend Sol's useful lifes-pan have run their course. If raised before then, conflict and chaos may result. The occupation by colonists of nearby star systems may preclude peaceful evacuation at Sol's death. Peace is supreme; only thus can the service of all to all be maintained. Change one day will be needed and welcomed, when time is complete, and Sol's power is exhausted. But before that time, what need has peace and contentment to be disturbed by innovators and adventurers?"

In the air, with stars above and cloud below, Phaethon contemplated his meeting with the Earthmind.

"Maybe She's trying to teach me something, not test me...."

"I wouldn't care to speculate, sir."

"Well. I won't fail this test at least. Release the information on the public channels. No good can come from trying to hide the truth."

"So you've always said, young master. But I see there is something else, yes?"

"Rhadamanthus—" Phaethon steeled himself. "The things I saw tonight—were real? This all isn't some part of a masquerade game? I'm not inside some pseudomnesia-play?"

"May I perform a Noetic reading to experience what occurred from your point of view?"

"I don't keep secrets from you, Rhadamanthus. You don't need to ask to read my mind."

"Yes, I do, sir. It's protocol. And what you thought was real was indeed quite real."

"The Golden Oecumene is under some sort of attack. And I'm a criminal, or a collaborator, just like my Neptunian friend, helping to destroy our paradise." Phaethon tasted bitterness like bile in his throat.

"With respect, sir, that conclusion is not warranted by the evidence you've seen so far."

Phaethon spread his arms and stopped his descent. He turned a fierce glare toward the penguin image.

"Oh, come now! I'm not stupid! We have a society of immortals. Our neural technology gives us, when we wish, perfect eidetic memory. Every past wrong, no matter how small, can be recalled many thousands of years after the fact. And there is no place to go to hide from those whom you have offended or who offend you. Here, to prevent even the possibility of crime, we manorials have no privacy, not even