John Wright - The Golden Age

In the front row, by himself, sat Kes Satrick Kes, the First Speaker of the Invariant Schools. He ignored convention, and

showed himself as dressed in a modern single-suit without ornament. In some ways, he was the most powerful Hortator here, because the special psychological uniformity of the Invariants, the so-called Protocols of Sanity, ensured that all the populations of the Cities in Space would follow his lead. Phaethon knew and liked these people. His engineering effort had organized shepherd moons to clear their civic orbits of collision passes, had built sails, vacuum-based microecolo-gies, and ring-arc structures for them. His attempts on their behalf to reduce Saturn, and create new worlds for them, while unsuccessful, had been as amicable as these dispassionate creatures allowed themselves to become.

Had they not been creatures of pure logic, Phaethon would have felt that Kes and his people, out of gratitude for the many services Phaethon's engineering firm had done the Invariants in times past, would urge a lenient sentence. But did the Invariants think gratitude was rational? Phaethon did not know.

The middle group of benches were occupied by Warlock neuroforms, the least conformist, and hence the least powerful, of the factions among the Hortators. The Warlock Schola had arranged themselves on the benches according to a symbolic pattern; group-mind and shared consciousness schools, the so-called Covens, were in the rear; individualist and emotion-linked schools were in the middle; and the so-called Possessed Ones, who had several split personalities occupying one brain, were in the front. Some Possessed Ones had brought a separate body for each aspect or partial. Phaethon could not guess how the Warlocks would vote, or even if they would vote; their minds were too strange. None here were pictured as Englishmen. Hindu princes, Chinese Mandarins, nude Australian shaman, and Red Indians from the New World formed a tapestry of color in their section.

The final group of pews, taking up the rest of the right wall, were basics. Captains of the major efforts, arts, and noo-sophic movements all had seats: educationalists and influential pedagogues, performancers from Lunar Farside, recalculators, redactors, mediums, downloads from the De-

meter Overmind, and Historians from the Museum of Thought were here. Epheseus Vanwinkle from the Mathuse-lean Scholum had (once again) interrupted his eon-long cryos-leep, his so-called Voyage to the Infinite Future, to be present at this meeting.

Famous mystagogues, avatars of anthropo-constructs, and emancipated partials were also seated in this section, forming the Parliament of Ghosts, which tried to represent the interests of beings who could not speak for themselves, people held in computer memory, unborn children, simulated characters, disbanded Compositions, and the like.

In front of all these, the first row of the basic section was occupied by Gannis of Jupiter, with twenty sub-Gannises, semi-Gannises and demi-Gannises gathered around him, a score of twins. They were dressed as French aristocrats, in pigeon blue coats, ruffles, finery, and lace. Even frozen in time, Gannis still wore a smug expression; he knew he (since he was both a Hortator and a Peer) was one of the most influential voices in the College, and the one who would be the most personally pleased to see Phaethon fall.

There was little prospect of mercy from the right side of the chamber.

He turned to the left. Phaethon was amused to see the manor-borns, perhaps more aware of Helion's utter realism than the others, had seated themselves facing the eastern windows, so that the late-afternoon sun would not be in their faces. Here were archons and subalterns from many famous mansions. Perhaps he could find some support among manor-borns like himself.

The Gold Manorials, of course, outnumbered the others. The Mansions of Gold included many members of the Parliament and the Shadow Parliament, political theorists, policy counselors, and so on. Long before the simulation or extrapolation technology was used for entertainment, it had been used by the early Gold School for predicting outcomes of political-economic policy decisions and of major data movements in worldwide memory space.

In the front row, the High Archon Tsychandri-Manyu

Tawne of Tawne House himself was present, depicted in stately ducal robes of red and gold. Almost every politician of the Shadow Parliament throughout the Golden Oecumene had, at one time or another, borrowed memory templates, skills, or advice from the Manyu mind-complex Tsychandri had started. Tsychandri was one of the founders of the Hor-tation Movement, and the most influential voice here. But, oddly, he was not the idealist he urged all others to be; his decisions were matters of practical and political (some said cynical) calculation.

And the political currents were running strongly against Phaethon here. It was clear that Tsychandri-Manyu would urge permanent exile, and perhaps public humiliations or denunciations atop that; the other Gold Mansions would follow his lead.

Seated nearby were archonesses from Eveningstar, Phosphorous, and Meridian Houses of the Red Mansion School. Their Edwardian dresses gleamed with scarlet and rose and crimson silk, and they were frozen in their poses, leaning to whisper to each other behind their elegant fans. Phaethon knew the Reds had emotional reasons to dislike him, and, creatures of great passion, the Red Queens and Countesses would indulge their emotions.

Hasantrian Hecaton Heo of Pallid House of the Whites had descended from transcendental thoughtspace and resumed human psychology in order to attend. Tau Continuous Nimvala of Albion House, also a White, had broken her seventy years of silence and come not as a partial but with her entire mind present. Both were represented as Victorian Ministers, of the High and Low Church respectively. The Pallids were pure intellectuals; the Albions allowed emotion, but only pride, disdain, arrogance, and the other emotions that urged men to disregard emotion. The Whites could be relied upon to be fair. Scientists and engineers, they might favor Phaethon's case.

The construct known as Ynought Subwon from New Centurion House was the only representative of the Dark-Grays, who, by long tradition, disapproved of Hortation. Dark Grays

were more ascetic than Silver-Grays. A spartan and laconic people, they believed in laws rather than in orations. Dark-Grays often served as Constables or Procurators for the Curia. Phaethon knew nothing about Ynought.

Viridimagus Solitarie (or a reconstruction of him) was present as a representative of the defunct Green Scholum, all the more noticeable because he had no mansion but was projecting himself through a rented public intellect, an ordinary-looking man in dark trousers and a long emerald coat. He stood out, because he was the only plain-dressed man on this side of the chamber. The Green School had been the primi-tivists (if such a thing could be imagined) among the manor-born. If Viridimagus continued that tradition, he would surely disapprove of any innovations, would call star colonization an abomination, and urge a harsh sentence.

A throng of Black Manorials, from Darksplatter House, Grue House, Inyourface House, and Out House, and a dozen other Petty Houses and part-mansions of the Black School crowded the higher bench at the back of the chamber. They were dressed in splendid clothing, black tuxedoes and sable velvet gowns, but had all disfigured themselves with diseases or birth defects common to the Victorian era. Their most famous member was Asmodius Bohost Clamour of Clamour House, who had represented himself in a grotesquely obese body, at least four hundred pounds mass. His black coat was the size of a tent, and jeweled buttons strained along the circumference of a vast globular waistcoat. Asmodius Bohost would urge public humiliation, and the Feast of Insults, or the punishment known as Excrementation, but not exile. The Black Mansions loved mockery and confrontation, and never voted for exile, which (because it required them to ignore their victims) caused them agonies of boredom.