John Wright - The Golden Age

Asmodious Bohost of Clamour House called out: "We are all impressed with your pathos. Please continue!"

Tsychandri-Manyu Tawne spoke: "Asmodius, silence! Your japes diminish our esteem, and offend the dignity of this College. Partial of Diomedes, proceed, I pray. We heed your words with grave attention."

"I will speak," said Diomedes. "Among the Neptunians, Phaethon is a savior. If other stars had living worlds, it is we who could pioneer them. Immortality is a golden cage for you; who among you would dare to travel far beyond the Noumenal Mentality, beyond the sight and wisdom of the Sophotechs, beyond any hope for resurrection? Who except for Phaethon? Who else? We Neptunians. Listen."

The figure raised a shadowy hand. "Fortunate children of a fortunate world, you are surrounded and involved with wealth and luxury and power from your first breath through all the days of your life. We who live in outer darkness have neither days, nor breath. Our resources are scant; our luxuries are few. And yet in return for this poverty, we have continuously what you know only during Masquerade, liberties unknown to you here. Our thoughts are our own; our privacy is absolute.

"An Eremite or Cold Duke who wishes for a private place or kingdom of his own need only find an asteroid or comet-head somewhere in the interstellar gloom, release his nano-machines, and sculpt the ice to whatever shape he fancies. From his own body he can make his subjects, his crystal gardens, his dream selves; from his own brain stuffs, he can make pseudo-intellects or subcompositions to govern all. Delirium and suicide and crude simulations without color are the entertainments of these lonely kingdoms; and his empire consists of no one other than himself, and whatever self-replications, reiterations, child partials, clones or autosexual harems, he has the templates and the energy to create."

The shadowy and faceless helmet seemed to turn left and right with deliberate motion, as if Diomedes were examining the chamber. "Are you repelled? Disgusted? You are wealthy people. You can afford to have emotions. Some of us cannot afford the glands or midbrain complexes required. It would repel you to live in a house grown from your own body,

surrounded by children cloned from your own brain information, perhaps; but we are nomads, and cannot afford to carry machineries and bodies as separate things. Whatever cannot be carried as a low-mass information template, be it family or friends or what-have-you, must be left behind. Nor do we have file space enough to keep all our individualities as separate. When the computer space has no more room, and the caravan is about to drift from an exhausted iceberg to new prospects, you too, I think, might find it would be better to become your friend and share his thoughts rather than to leave his mind behind to die.

"Yes, die! For death we have in plenty, which you fortunate Inner Worlds forget. Orpheus machines are few and far between, out there, and some stored cans of memory are lost in far icesteads or broken habitats, or hyperbolic orbits never to

be seen again."

Socrates from the front of the chamber, spoke: "Whoever lives far from the city, in the wilderness where no one goes, who has no laws and no civilization, he must be either a beast

or a god."

Diomedes, in a soft, broken, static-hissing voice, answered back: "Or a man, who is half of both. You Inner Worlds have forgotten pain and death, struggle and success, ambition and failure, work, heartbreak, and joy. You are no longer men. Technology has made you gods. Some of you are gods who play at men, perhaps, but gods."

It was Helion who spoke then: "We have pain in our lives also. Too much pain."

"With all due respect, sun god, compared to what we suffer, it is little."

Phaethon had been standing and remembering what he knew of Diomedes while the partial had been speaking.

They had first met some 250 years ago, for Xingis (as he had been called then) held the copyrights on a paleomne-monic reconstruction of a pre-Composition named Exo-Alphonse Rame (whom modern Neptunian name conventions

called Xylophone.)

Xylophone had done pioneer studies on the particle den-

sities and conditions of space between the local stars, and had been one of the designers of the old dark-matter probes. This was meteorological information Phaethon needed for his expedition. At the near light speeds the Phoenix Exultant would reach, a cloud of tenuous interstellar gas would be as solid as a brick wall; and relativity would increase even the mass of weakly interacting particles, neutrinos and photinos, till they would be able to affect baryon-based matter. Xylophone's theory predicted tides in the interstellar dark matter, based on the initial conditions during galactic condensation; and ripples in these tides would produce clear lanes, spaces emptier than normal space, where travel would be easier.

Diomedes had been more than willing to cooperate and share the information he had, and more. He had been enthralled by the idea of star colonization. All the best astronomical assemblies were in trans-Neptunian space; Phaethon's wealth, funneled through Diomedes, had transformed the local economy. Company towns sprang up around the staging areas from which advanced probes, and test models of the Phoenix Exultant, were launched into interstellar space. Other industries gathered around the radio dishes, tens of miles in diameter, which floated in the weightless calm so far from the sun's noise, listening to the return signals of those early probes.

The peculiar rules governing Neptunian psychology and psychogenesis encouraged the Tritonic Composition to create a generation of children or temporary-minds devoted likewise to Phaethon's vision.

But now those industries would close; Phaethon's wealth was exhausted. That zealous generation of children and temporaries would be reabsorbed into the parent mass. Or, if their habitats were too far for available fuel to reach, they would be left stranded. Many would go into slow-time hibernation, so-called "ship sleep." But some would not wake again.

Phaethon woke from his memories when a channel prior-itizer from the Eleemosynary Composition stood to speak: "Our compassion is stirred by your woe, good Diomedes. Return to the Inner System; come back into the light. Your

brains may join with ours. Our ways can tolerate even the most nonstandard neuroforms. Food and shelter and fellowship are ours to offer, and yours to have."

Asmodius Bohost spoke aloud: "By God's dangling phallus! Fellowship!? Shelter?! I'll do better than that! Why not come and stay with me? I'll build you a whorehouse, and load it with twenty pleasure menus from my personal Black Vault! If you're so afraid that immortality will rob your life of zest, I'll even put a dominatrix-ninja doll among the odalisques, so that, at random, one of the snuggle bunnies will go boom when you plunge in! What do you say?"

Diomedes said softly, "Like barbarians, like Esquimaux, we are more honored by hospitality than by any other thing." The shadow shape bowed. "But I cannot accept. Shall we leave our wives and half wives, brain mates and parent masses? We are bound by cords of love and tradition to our homes; in many cases, we are our homes. If your generosity is real, however, then give me alms enough to transmit my patterns back across the endless miles to Diomedes Prime, and my family-mind. Otherwise I die here, far from home." The Eleemosynary Composition spoke: "We shall give you what you need, and be glad to give."

Asmodius Bohost said, "Me, too! I'll even pay for a lasered tight-beam and a call-back, provided you hop on one foot and change your name to Mr. Twinkle-butt!"

Viviance Thrice Dozen Phosphoros of the Red School gestured toward Nebuchednezzar, raised her closed fan in one red-gloved hand: "Mr. Speaker! I would like to reintroduce, yet again, my motion to have Asmodius Bohost expelled from