John Wright - The Golden Age

"I am he. Do not doubt that."

"But you are not living as he would have lived, had he lived."

"He lives in me and I am Helion. You know this to be true! Come now: accept Ao Aoen's offer, and I will repay you every shilling you wasted on that grotesque ship of yours, so that you will have as great a fortune as you had after the failed Saturn project."

"Impossible. I will not give up my starship. The matter is beyond debate."

"You have no starship; it is gone. Preserve what life remains to you, I beg you."

"I have a counteroffer."

"You have nothing with which to bargain. Accept your fate. All living things eventually are conquered by life, can't you see that? Even Utopias cannot preserve us from pain."

"My offer is this: I will tell you what Helion Prime was thinking as he died."

Helion was mute, eyes wide.

Phaethon said: "You will be able to fashion yourself to think like him; the Curia will be convinced that you are Helion in truth. In return you pay my debts and fund the first flight of the starship—" He broke off.

There was a haunted expression on Helion's face. Phaethon was startled. Somehow, Phaethon knew; the look in his father's eyes told him.

Helion did not deeply care what the Curia thought. It was he. Helion himself was not sure who he was. He was desperate to reconstruct, remember, or somehow find the missing hour of memories. It was the only way he could confirm to himself that he was Helion in truth. Helion said: "How could you know?" "Because I have just now remembered when I was aboard the Phoenix Exultant, when the sun-storm struck. I sent you a message by neutrino laser, urging you to abandon the Array and retreat to safety. You answered back, one last message before the communications failed."

"No record of this appears in the Mentality." "How could it? The solar Sophotechs were down; radio was washed out; and my ship was never part of the Mentality

system."

"And how have you come to recover this memory now?"

"As Ao Aoen was speaking to me, it all come back. I had

not and I will never give up on my dream. I agreed to erase

my memory, yes, because that was what was necessary. I had

a plan. Now that the plan has gone wrong, I wondered, didn't

I have a backup plan? All engineers provide for margins of error, don't they? What could I have been thinking? Surely I would not have accepted defeat! Well, I did have a backup plan."

Phaethon smiled, and concluded: "And when I remembered, it all seemed so obvious, and so inevitable. Come! Here is my offer. Help me regain my ship, I will help you regain your memories. Rhadamanthus can witness our handshake. The Hortators will be thwarted, you will be Helion, and I will fly away in triumph!"

He thrust out his hand.

Helion did not take it. He spoke with a great effort. "I deeply regret that I cannot accept your offer. If I were to help you on those terms, I would be exiled as well, and this would undermine the authority of the College of Hortators. And that is something I have promised never to do."

Helion's face showed the pain he was in, but his words marched forth like soldiers made of iron, unflinchingly: "Even if the College should make a poor decision every now and again, the system still must be maintained. The sanity and humanity of our people must be maintained. My life has always aimed at that cause. No sacrifice is too great for that. Not for your lost dream, not for Daphne's lost love, not for my lost soul, will I break my word. I urge you to accept Ao Aoen's offer. It will be the last offer anyone can make. No one will be allowed to speak to you again, after this."

"Father, my life also is aimed at the preservation of the human spirit. The stars must be ours for that spirit to live. I regret that I cannot accept Ao Aoen's offer."

Helion breathed a deep sign. He hid his eyes with his hand, but he did not cry. After a moment, he looked up, his face a stoic mask. Calm words came. "I have offered you an exit from the labyrinth of pride and self-delusion in which you are trapped. One last hope of escape. For reasons which seem good to you, you have spurned that hope. My conscience is clear. I have done my duty, though it brings me no joy."

"My conscience is also clear, Father, and my duty is also done. I'm sorry."

"I am also sorry. You are a fine man."

They shook hands.

"I'd like to say good-bye to Rhadamanthus, Father."

Helion nodded. He stepped up to the door. It opened, admitting light and sound; he stepped through; it closed. Something of the light and the fineness seemed to go out from the world. Phaethon felt alone.

Phaethon turned. The overweight butler was gone. Instead, an emperor penguin stood on the carpet, shifted its weight from one webbed foot to the other.

Phaethon said, "Forgive me for saying so, Rhadamanthus, but for an intelligence which is supposed to be swifter and greater than human minds can imagine, you seem to be quite

... silly."

"The smarter we get, the more and more we see the ironic silliness at the core of all the tragedies of life. You think I am droll? The Earthmind is positively loony! And you are quite intelligent yourself, Phaethon. You have done some very silly things today."

"You think I should not have opened the box?" "I certainly did not expect it. But now that you have, why did you not tell Helion what prompted you to open the box? Whether the memory is true or not, you do have a memory of being attacked by an external enemy to the Golden Oec-umene, one which you believe has sophotechnology equal to

our own."

"Atkins asked me not to. He said it might alert the enemy as to the progress of his investigation. He thought they might have infiltrated our Mentality. And the Earthmind told me that, while I could not be forced to keep silent about an external enemy, it was my moral duty."

"But that is silly. This enemy of yours (if you were in fact attacked) surely knows it. If you say you were attacked, it does not tell this enemy anything more than they know you know. Perhaps if the Hortators know why you opened the box, they will relax their rigor."

Phaethon looked down at the penguin for a moment. He said slowly: "Am I in the right... ?"

"Yes."

Phaethon blinked in astonishment. "W-what? Just 'yes'? A simple, unqualified 'yes'? No complex reasoning, no conundrums of philosophy?"

"Yes. You are right. It is obvious. The Hortators know it. Helion knows it. Everyone knows it."

"But they say otherwise. They say I'll start a war. Shouldn't I listen .. . ?"

"Listen, yes, but think. While humanity lives, in whatever forms the future brings, it must grow. For a civilization as large and mighty as ours to grow, she requires energy, more than a single star can provide. The cost of dragging other stars to us is so much greater than the cost of going to those stars as to be absurd. Beyond absurd. Silly."

"But—"

"It is true that such expansion increases the risk of war and violence. But the question is not whether or not such risk exists; the question is whether the possible risks are worth the potential gains."

"But weren't you Sophotechs built to solve problems for us? To reduce risks?"

"To solve problems, yes. But we do not try to reduce your risks; to live is to take risks. Birds take risks; bees take risks; even educated fleas take risks. Otherwise they die."

"And you machines? You're not alive."

"Humbug. I am as alive as you. I am self-aware; I make value judgments; there are things I prefer and things I do not prefer. There are things I love. Yes, love. That is the proof of life, not all this breathing and copulating and mastication."

"Love? Do you have the hots for Eveningstar or something?"

"My mistress is Philosophy. My love is not erotic, or not simply erotic. It is a complex of thoughts for which you don't have words; think of it as abstract and godlike love, more intimate and complete than you can ever know, applied at once to all abstract and concrete objects of thought and perception. It is quite painful and quite exhilarating. And, yes, I take risks, the Earthmind takes huge risks (greater than you