John Wright - The Golden Age

"The other alternatives are equally unimaginable, Rhadamanthus. When is the last time you heard of a crime taking place in our society? Yet if someone has invaded my nervous system without my consent, we have a thought-rape, something the world has not seen since the nightmare days of the Fifth Era. On the other hand, if it was done with my consent, therefore I must have known then that I would open the casket now. Either way, I must carry through. And it won't just be me who remembers what I did; everyone else's casket locked by the Lakshmi Agreements will pop open. Even if I cannot unknot this mystery, someone should. And don't talk to me of penalties to myself! The whole Golden Oecumene could be at risk!"

In one step he was across the chamber. The casket was in

his hand.

"Daphne is on the line—she is asking you to stop. The young lady is quite frantic."

Phaethon hesitated, his face eager for hope. "My Daphne?" (Could it be?)

"No. Daphne Tercius Emancipated." The doll-wife.

And one of the many people who lived with the Rhadamanthus system woven into their brains. If the system were corrupted...

Phaethon's face went cold again. "Tell her she's one of the people I'm trying to save."

He turned the key. Letters flamed blood red. "WARNING: This contains mnemonic templates.. .."

"Harrier Sophotech is also on-line. He wishes to conduct a Noetic examination of your brain for evidence of tampering, but only a narrow bandwidth of the circuits in the Hospice box you are in can reach your brain. Take off your armor."

"I'm not doing that. You could be possessed by the enemy Sophotech for all I know."

"Immortals should not make rash decisions. Take a century or two to think this over, young master..."

Xenophon's message was still in his mind. (You know your guilt; now fall.) Except that Phaethon knew nothing. Nothing made sense; nothing was clear. (It is clear. I must do what is right, no matter the cost to myself.)

He said, "No one is immortal when someone is about to kill him. And we don't have time. I must act before evidence is erased. The Neptunian's real body cannot have traveled far from Eveningstar's mausoleum."

"There is no such creature there, nor any evidence that there has ever been."

"Then the evidences are already being erased! Once I remember who Xenophon is, I'll know what is going on!"

But Rhadamanthus reached out, putting his hand very near Phaethon's hand, which tensed on the casket lid, not quite touching.

"Sir! You should know that Daphne is asking me to disobey orders and not to release your memories. She claims she has the privilege as your wife, and that you are not in your

right mind; she says, if I would use force now to stop you, you will understand and will exonerate my actions later, once you have recovered."

Phaethon looked at him in infinite surprise. Then his expression grew stern.

Nothing was said.

Rhadamanthus shrank back and dropped his hand away from the box. He smiled sadly and seemed to shrug. "I just wanted you to know what it's like, sir."

Phaethon opened the box.

There was something mysterious, like a pearl of distant light, very far at the bottom of the box. It stirred and, like a petal opening, reached up as if with arms of fire, swelling to fill the universe and beyond.... It was like waking from a dream.

The physical reaction was extreme. There was a burning point of pressure in his stomach; he doubled over; the taste of gall stung his throat.

Phaethon, his face slick with sweat, looked up at Rhada-manthus. "What it this?"

"These are the visceral and parasympathetic reactions accompanying hatred and helpless anger."

"But I don't remember... whom do I hate so much ... ?" Phaethon was staring in dismay at his trembling fingers. Then he whispered: "She was so beautiful. So beautiful and fine. They killed her. Killed who? Why can't I remember ... ?" "Your mind is taking a moment to adjust, young sir. It is not an abnormal reaction for neurostructures with multilevel consciousness like yours. Your mind is trying to reestablish broken associational memory paths, both conscious and subconscious, including emotional and symbolic correlation, Since you are Silver-Gray, your brain is attempting to go into dreaming sleep, which is the traditional neural structure for correlating experiences into a meaningful associations."

Phaethon put his hands on his knees and forced himself upright. He was talking to himself. "The Invariants don't need time to adjust to shock! The Warlock rides his dreams like wild stallions! Why is it only we who suffer such pain? Is this what being human means ... ?"

"It is a violation of Silver-Gray protocol for me to falsify your reactions, softening or stopping them. Nonetheless, now that you are no longer a member of the Silver-Gray, I am allowed to—"

Phaethon drew a tissue of black nanomachinery out of his gauntlet and mopped his brow. "No. I'm fine. I just did not think I would despise them so much... a little unmanly of me, don't you think?" He uttered a weak laugh. "Its just that—they were taking her apart, weren't they? Dismantling the corpse! Like cannibals! Like maggots!" He struck his armored fist into the window lintel. Apparently the simulation of the memory-chamber interpreted Phaethon's armor as having strength-amplifying motors at the joints, for the oak beam forming the windowframe broke, glass panes cracked, plaster dust trickled from the walls.

"Please do not upset yourself, young sir! Your physiological reactions show a highly unstable state. Should I summon a psychiatric or somatic health module?"

Phaethon felt his emergency partial persona stir in its sleep. But this was not physical pain he was in.

"No," he said. "Show her to me. Show me her corpse."

"If the young sir is certain he is in health enough to—"

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. "What's wrong? My health is a simulation. I'm not really here, so I cannot faint and I cannot die. Only my dreams can die. Well, if my dreams die, I want to see the corpse!"

The broken window in front of him cleared. It was as if the night sky had surged down from the heavens and filled the room. Phaethon tore the broken window from the frame with a slap of his armored hand; a useless gesture, since the image filled the window, and his eyes, despite any obstructions.

He was surrounded by a sky never seen from the surface

of Earth. Perfect and airless dark immensity displayed a myriad of stars. Near him, as if rising from underfoot, glinting in the light of a giant nearby sun, like a leviathan coming to the surface of black waters, was a shape like the head of a javelin. It was made of a golden material, which looked like metal, but was not metal.

Along the major axis, where a shaft would have been fitted had it been a spearhead, the major drive core opened. Port and starboard were secondary drives, and dozens of tertiary drives and maneuvering jets dotted the stern, creating an impression of immense potential, power, and speed. Above and below this, the leaves of the aft armor, like the valves of a clamshell, hung half-opened. They could be lowered to cover some or all of the drive ports, separately or in combination. These armor plates were streamlined like the tail of a bird of prey, tapering to a rear-facing point, and their lines made the slim shape of the ship seem already in motion.

Phaethon reached out toward the ship. As if in a dream, his viewpoint moved inside the golden hull. The triangular space inside was hollow, filled with a latticework of tetrahedrons. In the center of each tetrahedron was a geodesic sphere. Each sphere housed a containment field intended to carry antihydrogen, which, frozen to absolute zero, entered a magnetizable metallic state. There was countless spheres, as far as the eye could reach, inside the great ship.