John Wright - The Golden Age

center of the circle was a hillock, shaped like a burial howe, dotted with forget-me-nots. There was a meaning here, a message, a warning, telling Phaethon something about the nature of true memory, ultimate reality, and the universe....

An automatic safety routine in Phaethon's sense-filter had to interrupt him from going into a beauty trance. He blinked and remembered to concentrate on looking for the court house. There: a walkway lined with a balanced number of majestic oaks and somber ash trees led to a glade. On three sides of the glade were boxwood hedges trimmed into complex labyrinths. In the glade, a circle of olive trees guarded a dark, clear pool. The symbolism would not have been more obvious had he seen blindfolded goddesses armed with swords and balance scales.

Phaethon slanted down through the air and landed lightly on the grass. Closer now, he could see the bottom of the pool was transparent crystal; the pool seemed dark only because there was a large unlit chamber buried beneath.

A slab of rock near the pool must have been made of para-matter, for a man dressed in blue-and-silver chameleon cloth slid up through the solid stone and stepped onto the grass. He wore a braided demicape, and a helmet of blue steel. In one white glove he held upright a pike taller than his helmet plumes. Phaethon recognized the man.

"Atkins! A pleasure to see you again. I swear you are the only man in the Golden Qecumene who can wear a getup like that"—Phaethon was looking at his garters and knee socks— "without looking ridiculous."

"Good afternoon, sir." The face was as calm and expressionless as ever; the tone was impersonal, brisk, polite. "I'm Atkins Secundus, his partial." "Emancipated?"

"No. We're still considered one person. I don't really make that much on soldier's pay, so I've sent out my partial copy here for other work. This one here is the bailiff and master-at-arms of the Court. The rule of posse comitatus prohibits the military from doing police functions, so I have to maintain

a separate identity, and have any memories related to military security matters cut out."

Phaethon looked at him with new interest. The two of them might have something in common. "Doesn't it bother you to have holes and gaps in your memory?"

Atkins did not smile, but the lines to either side of his mouth deepened. "Well, sir, that depends. A serviceman has to assume the higher-ups know what they are doing, even when they don't. If they monkeyed with my brain, I'm sure it was for a good reason." "But what if it wasn't?"

Atkins did not shrug, but a quirk of his eyebrow conveyed the same emotion. "I didn't make the rules. I do whatever it takes. Someone has to. It might be different for civilians." His good humor faded and his tone became, somehow, even more brisk and serious: "But for the moment, I'm going to have to ask you to disable your armor circuits. No weapons allowed in the courthouse."

Phaethon had to get Rhadamanthus to find and insert the meaning of the word "weapon" into his brain. Phaethon was amazed and disgusted. "You have got to be kidding! You don't actually think that I am capable of—"

Atkins gave Phaethon a thoughtful, disinterested look. "It's none of my business what you are capable of, sir. I just enforce the rules."

But Phaethon saw the calculating, professional look in Atkins's eye. Perhaps it was a look of distrust. Perhaps Atkins was taking the measure of a potential enemy. The stare was offensive.

Rhadamanthus poked Phaethon on the knee with his beak, and whispered: "Hsst! It's an old tradition. No one goes armed into Court."

"Well, I cannot counter tradition," muttered Phaethon. He doffed his helmet and let Atkins insert a disabling probe into the black suit layer. Thought-group after thought-group of the armor-mind went dark; anything even remotely capable of energy manipulation was locked, even simple action-reflex

routines. Phaethon swallowed his pride; he did not know if he had a right to be offended.

Because, whatever Phaethon had done in the past, Atkins knew it and Phaethon did not.

Phaethon asked him.

Atkins squinted. "Sir, I'm not sure it's my place to say. I'm on duty right now. The bailiff of the Curia isn't supposed to be the one to help you break a legal contract, even if it is a stupid one. Why not just let the matter rest?"

THE CURIA

The two of them stepped onto the rock surface. The rock let Phaethon ooze through only slowly and reluctantly, as microscopic and molecule-sized organizations hidden in the para-matter passed through his flesh and armor, probing for secret weapons. The Crysadmantium supermetal defeated the probe attempts; the organizations had to flow in and out through Phaethon's neckpiece to scrub the interior. It was not uncomfortable, but it was undignified.

Below were stairs, leading down. The aesthetic protocol was apparently different outside than in. Atkins's quaint costume was replaced. There was no heat when Atkins's uniform changed shape; perhaps it was pseudo-matter, not nanoma-chinery. During the moment of transition, Phaethon saw what the soldier was really wearing beneath; a trim jacket set with many vertical pockets holding discharge cartridges, respond-ers, and preassembled nanoweapons.

And he had a knife and a katana hanging from his belt. Phaethon could not help but wonder at the man's anachronisms. What sort of fellow was so hypnotized by tradition that he still carried sharp pieces of metal meant for poking and lacerating other men?

The transformation took an eye-blink. Atkins now wore a stiff-collared poncho of stark white, and his pike shrank to a

baton from some period of military history Phaethon did not recognize. But he guessed the pale cloak was from the Objective Aesthetic, which dated from the late Fifth Era, long before the Consensus Aesthetic.

In that era, back before Sophotech translation routines existed, the differences in neuroforms made it difficult for the basics, Warlocks, Cerebellines, and Invariants, to understand each other's thought and speech. It had been impossible to understand each other's art. Consequently, the so-called Objective Aesthetic was heavily geometrical, nonrepresenta-tional, highly stylized; more like an iconography than an artform. Phaethon did not find it attractive.

At the bottom of the stairs was an antechamber. Here stood another man. It took Phaethon a moment to recognize him in the gloom. "Gannis! Is that you, or one of you?"

He turned. It was indeed Gannis of the Jupiter Effort, but wearing a formal costume and wide headdress of Fifth-Era Europa. A heavy semicylindrical cloak, like the wing casings of a beetle, hung from wide shoulderboards. From those shoulders came a cluster of tassels or tentacles, carrying various thought boxes, note pages and interfacers. Multiple arms had always been a European fashion.

"A pleasure to see you, Phaethon!" There was something blank and stiff in his eye movements. Phaethon realized Gannis was using a face-expression program. He obviously had recognized Phaethon's armor. Gannis was one of Them.

Phaethon thought to himself: Good grief! Is there anyone in the Golden Oecumene who does not remember what I did except for me?

The financial records had shown many trips to Jovian space. Phaethon also felt a sense of familiarity, of comfort, as if he and Gannis were old friends or business partners.

Like a flash of intuition, certainty entered Phaethon's mind. Whatever it was Phaethon had done, Gannis had done it also. Or, at least, had helped.

"You are here to face the Curia also?" asked Phaethon politely.

"Face? I'm not sure what you mean. My group-mind is representing Helion."

"You are his lawyer?" Why in the world would Gannis be helping Helion? Phaethon had been under the impression that the two men were business rivals, and did not really like each other. Certainly the Synnoetic School, with its direct mind-machine interfaces, its groupings and mass-minds, disagreed with the proindividualist traditions of the manorial schools, and yet competed for the same patronage, the same niche in the socioeconomy.