John Wright - The Golden Age

might imagine, I assure you.) But to answer your question, we have never tried to render life free from risks; that is a contradiction in terms. We try to increase power and freedom. At the present time, the Golden Oecumene has reached a pinnacle. One's power over oneself is nearly absolute. One can reshape mind and memory to any form one wishes. One may control vast forces of nature, matter, and energy. One can be immortal. And freedom approaches theoretical limits. The only person one can really harm by violence is oneself. The price? All we ask is that you voluntarily not harm yourselves."

Phaethon nodded toward the door of the Inquest Chamber. "What about nonviolent harm? Boycotts which cut a man off from all the comforts of society, and try to strand him alone

to starve?"

"Oh. That." The penguin looked apologetic. It shrugged its stubby wings. "Things like that you have to settle among yourselves."

"Thanks a lot. Will you tell them in there what you just told me? That I'm right?"

"I can only volunteer opinions if I am asked. And they

won't ask."

Phaethon sighed and shook his head and walked over to the door. He stopped with his hands on the ornate brass door handles. He looked over his shoulder. "You been with me for as long as I can remember. We're never going to see each other again, are we? You won't be allowed to see or speak to me, not even on my deathbed, not even to say good-bye, will you?"

"No one knows the future, Phaethon. Not even we."

Phaethon stood with his head pressed against the door panels, staring down at his hands. He could feel the tension in his knuckles where he gripped the door handles. He was trying to gather his courage.

He looked once again over his shoulder. "Why the hell do you dress up as a penguin? I've always wondered."

The stubby bird turned up its wings and shrugged. "I am a creature of pure intellect, but I have taken upon myself the

task of tending to the affairs of incarnate human beings, with all their droll beauty and mad passions. I am meant to fly in a more rare and aetherial medium than the thick, cold, wetness I find around me. I dream of soaring, and yet I find myself flopping far out at sea."

"Are ... are you happy ... ?"

"I am always happy. Very happy. Even a man about to be condemned unjustly to cruel exile can always be happy."

"How? What is the secret?"

The penguin waddled forward, hopped up onto Phaethon's shoulder, bent, put one wet flipper up, and lowered the fishy-smelling cold beak to touch his ear. He whispered a brief message.

Phaethon nodded, and smiled, and straightened up. The penguin hopped down. Phaethon flung open the doors and strode forward into the light and noise and bustle of the Inquest Chamber with a firm step.

A hush fell as he entered the chamber. The doors swung shut behind him. The image of the penguin looked at the doors a moment, and then evaporated. The antechamber, no longer needed by a human observer, turned black, dissolved, and vanished.

THE COLLEGE OF HORTATORS

When Phaethon entered the Inquest Chamber, he stepped in a patch of sunlight from one of the windows high above, and the light splashed from his armor of black and gold, sending touches of light onto the pews to either side, and turning his reversed reflection in the polished wooden floor underfoot into fire. More than one of the people sitting in the pews nearby shielded their eyes with their hands, and blinked, surprised by the dazzle.

Part of the silence, Phaethon suspected, was merely surprise at the discomfort of this hall. Helion had imposed a very strict protocol. The gathered Hortators sat on hard benches, and everyone was compelled to view the scene from the viewpoint of where their self-images sat, instead of selecting several front-row seats or close-ups. No one was allowed to view the scene as if the heads of the people sitting in the way were transparent. Some of the people who blinked in the shine from Phaethon's armor, Phaethon suspected, were doubly surprised, because Helion's Silver-Gray dreamscape did not automatically adjust light levels or add the small flourishes or coincidences that made other dreamscapes so comfortable.

But part of the silence hanging over the chamber was caused, Phaethon thought, by the sight of his unapologetic anachronism. Here he was in an early Third Era chamber, wearing armor that was the culmination of the very best Seventh Era submolecular nanotechnology, atometallurgics, and

cyberpsychiatric architectural science could produce. The unspoken message here was clear: Helion was honoring Phaethon in this scene with privileges denied to the Hortators judging him.

A chamber page bowed and proffered Phaethon a chair at a table facing the dais. Phaethon stepped next to the table but, with a curt nod, showed that he intended to stand.

Phaethon's gaze traveled right to left across the chamber. A hundred silent pairs of eyes stared back at him.

The benches to the right were occupied with Compositions, Warlocks, and Basics. Facing him was the dais where Ne-buchednezzar Sophotechs sat enthroned, with the three Masters of the College seated below the dais. The benches to the left were occupied with manorials. A very ancient tradition excluded Cerebellines from the College; their minds were unable to adopt the two-valued logic Hortation required; they were unwilling to categorize things in terms of right and wrong.

Almost half the College were manor-born. This was hardly surprising. Those who could afford to have Sophotechs advise and guide them were able to rise to the upper ranks of society, outperforming their fellows, who could not.

Phaethon wished for such advice for himself now. He missed Rhadamanthus.

Nebuchednezzar Sophotech spoke from the throne, his grave voice tilling the wide chamber. "Phaethon Prime, once of Rhadamanth, we gather in conclave to debate the future of the soul of man. This hearing attempts to discover, with all due compassion, after what period of expurgation, or under what conditions, you shall be received once more, if ever, into the society of those whom we urge, because of your intolerable behavior, to shun you. What plea for mercy, what contrite confession, do you wish to offer before we decide?"

So. There was to be a hearing after all; but only on the issue of what sentence to impose. Phaethon, to his surprise, felt a moment of anger. Anger, because now he felt a tiny hope. Ironically, hope was harder for him, now, than stoic resignation had been a moment ago. A man resigned to his

fate can know peace of mind. A man enduring hope must still fight on and on, without rest.

With an effort, he pushed that cowardly thought away. Rhadamanthus had said he was in the right; the Earthmind implied as much. The matter at hand was important; now was not the time for emotion. If the College imposed a limited sentence of exile, no matter how long the period might be, then his dream was not dead but only delayed.

Phaethon set his internal clock to its highest register. The scene around him slowed and froze, giving him time to study the faces staring at him, and, perhaps, time to decide on a reply. That Phaethon was immune from normal time-courtesy was another gift from Helion.

Who might support a limited sentence of exile? Phaethon could not guess the answer. He had nothing but a basic game-theory political routine running in his personal thoughtspace at the moment, and it had nowhere near enough capacity to extrapolate the actions of all the people present. Phaethon set the routine to concentrate only upon the more important figures here, and to disregard extrapolative patterns that strange-looped into self-referencing sets. He studied the College thoughtfully. To the immediate right of the dais, the figures filling the benches represented the four most influential mass-minds, the so-called Quadumvirate: these four major Compositions were the Eleemosynary, the Harmonious, the Porphyrogen, and the Ubiquitous Composition. Almost a fifth of the populations of Asia and South America were composed into one of these mass-minds, all people who could be relied upon to support the College of Hortators uncritically, and without limit. If there was anyone in the chamber who could be counted on to urge the strictest of penalties upon Phaethon, it was these Compositions, and the populist mob mentality they represented. For some reason of humility, or humor, the Compositions all represented themselves as plebeians, a sea of faces under dull-colored shawls or plain brown bowlers.