John Wright - The Golden Age

"But you still dreamed of happiness with him, even though he had spurned you as a ghost. Apparently your maker did not understand my scion as well as she imagined: Frankly, I never thought Daphne Prime understood Phaethon at all. The personality she gave you did not win his love or admiration; he wanted the original, even with her moods and flaws. You were tormented by the fear that you were a caricature, with traits exaggerated to mock poor Phaethon, created by Daphne before her drowning as a type of revenge on him. In any case, you and he agreed to enter into the mutual hallucination that you were married to, and loved, each other."

"But he loves me! He does! It is real!"

"Then why doesn't he spend his days with you? No, my dear. His love is an implanted delusion."

"But I love him. He is a man utterly without fear! My love is true even if I am not. And I don't care who I really am! I don't care who I was. There is a bond between us; I see it in his eyes! He and I will go away somewhere together, to De-meter or the Jovian system, a long honeymoon; he and I can

learn who we really are, learn to love each other!"

"Ah." Helion looked sad. "That's another part of the tragedy. Your wealth and prestige and position, and his also, are nothing but hallucination. You cannot afford to go anywhere. You don't even have carriage fare for a trot across town to your stables. Her stables, actually. The real Daphne put everything she owned into a trust fund to maintain her private dreamworld. If the finance-mind of the Eveningstar Sophotech can invest her money wisely, Daphne's little dream box will continue to get power and computer support for a long, long time. The money you and Phaethon have been living off of recently is mine. The other part of the reason why Phaethon subscribed to the Lakshmi Agreement is that he was bankrupt."

"Bankrupt... ?"

"Quite penniless. None of the luxuries you have are yours."

"So you've chosen this day to ruin my life? There must be something you want from me." she said.

"I would have spared you if I could have. The Hortators who are overseeing the implementation of the Lakshmi Agreement have lost track of Phaethon more than once, ever since the Masquerade part of the Celebrations started. The Aurelian Sophotech running the Celebration has been entirely uncooperative, and will not keep track of Phaethon's movements for us: he thinks the integrity of his little Masquerade is somehow more important than the will of the social conscience! Well. No matter. We're afraid Phaethon might run into someone who doesn't abide by Hortator mandates; Ca-cophiles, simpletons, or eccentrics. If that happens, he may become aware of, and curious about, the gaps in his memory. Your mission is to prevent him from satisfying that curiosity."

"How?"

"He trusts you. He thinks you are the woman he loves. All you need to do is lead him astray."

"What?! You think I'm false, just a doll, so it will be all fine and dandy for me to go spreading falsehoods around, is that it?"

"Phaethon himself, just before he signed the agreement,

asked you to keep him from opening his old memories. We all saw it. He had a strange little smile on his face; but he did ask you, and you did agree. I swear it. Rhadamanthus, could you confirm my words?"

A disembodied voice, like a ghost, echoed through the corridor: "Helion speaks without deceptive intent."

Daphne stared up at Helion, thinking. Then she said: "But why? Why are you doing this? It doesn't seem like you: I thought you were so famous for your honesty."

"Even if what I must do wounds him, I could never betray Phaethon. You ... you are not the only one who loves him."

Helion stared out across the solar surface at the gathering storm. His voice was gentle as he spoke: "There were some irregularities surrounding Phaethon's birth, but, nonetheless, his mind was taken from my mental templates. He was born at a time in my life when I thought that my lack of success was due to overcaution; and I tried to give him what I thought I lacked. In a very real sense, he is me, the version of me I would have been if I were more adventurous, if I took more chances.

"He and I are much alike, despite that one difference, and his help was invaluable in our earlier planetary engineering projects. He never took defeat demurely; frustration merely led him to explore new avenues, to find new approaches. Those successes eventually led to the foundation and creation of the Solar Array.

"But his virtues carried a corresponding vice. Pride can become vainglory very easily, and self-reliance degenerate to mere selfishness. For me, my ambition was to do deeds never done nor dreamt before, to tame the titanic forces in the solar core to serve the use and pleasure of mankind, win glory for myself, and help civilization. Not Phaethon! His ambition was as grand as mine, perhaps, but his goals took no notice of the dangers his success would generate. My ambitions are constructive; they aid the general good, and win the universal applause of a grateful society. His ambitions were destructive of the general good, he won universal scorn. He was not

brought before the Peers for reward, but before the Hortators for reprimand."

"You speak about paternal love; I was asking about honesty."

Helion turned and looked down at her. "This deception shall not last forever; it cannot. But if it lasts fifty or a hundred years—an eye-blink for souls as long-lived as we are—it will give Phaethon time enough, I hope, to see the good in a type of life other than the one into which he withdrew. Why must he be so alone? And, yes, I have hopes: I'd like him to join me in the Solar Array. There might have been no disaster, had I had someone of his drive and competence working there. But his wild dreams always led him to spurn my generous offers to have him join me. Ah! But now his amnesia makes him forget those preconceived ideas. Now let him look with fresh eyes at the kinds of projects to which genius like his, by right, should be applied. Constructive and useful projects ... Can you imagine how proud I'd be if he won a place at my side at the Conclave of Peers? Well, then! During this brief spell of amnesia, now comes his chance to decide again, this time without prejudice, which way his destiny should go."

Helion took her shoulders and drew her to her feet. "You feel the same, I know. You think that if Phaethon forgot his old wife, he would give you time enough to prove your love for him, and win his heart. Once he recalls the truth, perhaps a hundred years from now, he may have a moment of anger, yes: but then he will pause and reflect on all the good this period has brought to him: a wife better suited to him; a lifework which brings him fame, not obloquy; he will thank us then. Do you doubt me?"

"No. I know you speak the truth."

"Then you will agree to help?"

Daphne closed her eyes. She felt weak. "Yes ..."

"Very well. One more sacrifice I ask of you. You must redact this conversation, and store it till it might be needed. Otherwise the knowledge will gnaw at you and ruin your

happiness. And Phaethon is perceptive enough to detect any playacting."

"So to fool him, I have to fool myself as well? That seems foolish."

"Do I see a spark of your old spunk returning? Perhaps the Silver-Gray disciplines have given you some resilience after all."

Daphne shoved his hands away from her shoulders. "Or maybe your famous love of realism has made me hate fakes and fakery. The Eveningstar Mansion of the Red Manorial School taught me that one should do only what serves one's own pleasure: that there was no such thing as true and false, only pleasant and unpleasant. When I had a Warlock neuro-form, I joined a different scholum, and the Warlocks taught me that the nonrational sections of the brain were sources of higher wisdom, that dreams, instincts, and intuitions were superior to logic. But I joined the Silver-Gray because they preached that there were principles outside oneself which one should hold, a way of life based on reality, on tradition and reason. Where is all that talk now?"