John Wright - The Golden Age

THE GOLDEN AGE

Copyright © 2002 by John C. Wright

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-57984-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001058468

First edition: April 2002

First mass market edition: April 2003

Printed in the United States of America 098765432 1

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

grouped by nervous system formation (neuroform)

Biochemical Self-Aware Entities

Base neuroform

PHAETHON PRIME of RHADAMANTH, Silver-Gray

Manorial School HELION RELIC of RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's sire,

founder of the Silver-Gray Manorial School, and a

peer DAPHNE TERCIUS SEMI-RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's

wife GANNIS HUNDRED-MIND GANNIS, Synergistic-

Synnoint School, a peer ATKINS VINGT-ET-UN GENERAL-ISSUE, a soldier

Nonstandard neuroforms

VAFNIR of MERCURY EQUILATERAL STATION, a peer

XENOPHON of FARAWAY, Tritonic Neuroform Composure School, called the Neptunians

XINGIS of NEREID, also called DIOMEDES, Silver-Gray School

Alternate Organization neuroform, commonly called

Warlocks

AO AOEN, the Master-Dreamer, a peer

NEO-ORPHEUS the Apostate, protonothary and chair

of the College of Hortators ORPHEUS MYRIAD AVERNUS, founder of the Second

Immortality, a Peer

Cortial-Thalamically Integrated neuroform, commonly called Invariants

KES SENNEC the Logician, a peer

Cerebelline neuroform

WHEEL-OF-LIFE, an Ecological Mathematician, a peer GREEN-MOTHER, the artiste who organizes the ecological performance at Destiny Lake

Mass-Mind Compositions

The ELEEMOSYNARY COMPOSITION, a Peer

The HARMONIOUS COMPOSITION, of the College of

Hortators The BELLIPOTENT COMPOSITION (disbanded)

Electrophotonic Self-Aware Entities

Sophotechs

RHADAMANTHUS, a manor-house of the Silver-Gray School, million-cycle capacity

EVENINGSTAR, a manor-house of the Red school, million-cycle capacity

NEBUCHEDNEZZAR, advisor to the College of Hortators, ten-million-cycle capacity

HARRIER, consulting detective, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity

MONOMARCHOS, a barrister, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity

AURELIAN, host of the Celebration, fifty-thousand-million-cycle loose capacity

The ENNEAD consists of nine Sophotech groups, each of over a billion-cycle capacity, including Warmind, Westmind, Orient, Austral, Boreal, Northwest, Southwest, and others.

EARTHMIND, the unified consciousness in which all terrestrial machines, and machines in Near-Earth-Orbit, from time to time participate: trillion-cycle capacity

PROLOGUE

CELEBRATIONS OF THE IMMORTALS

It was a time of masquerade. It was the eve of the High Transcendence, an event so solemn and significant that it could be held but once each thousand years, and folk of every name and iteration, phe-notype, composition, consciousness and neuroform, from every school and era, had come to celebrate its coming, to welcome the transfiguration, and to prepare.

Splendor, feast, and ceremony filled the many months before the great event itself. Energy shapes living in the north polar magnetosphere of the sun, and Cold Dukes from the Kuiper belts beyond Neptune, had gathered to Old Earth, or sent their representations through the mentality; and celebrants had come from every world and moon in the solar system, from every station, sail, habitat and crystal-magnetic latticework.

No human or posthuman race of the Golden Oecumene was absent from these festivities. Fictional as well as actual personalities were invited. Composition-assisted reconstructions of dead or deleted paladins and sages, magnates and philosophers, walked by night the boulevards of the Aurelian palace-city, arm-in-arm with extrapolated demigoddesses from imagined superhuman futures, or languid-eyed lamia from morbid unrealized alternatives, and strolled or danced among the monuments and energy sculptures, fountains, dream fixtures, and phantasms, all beneath a silver, city-

covered moon, larger than the moon past ages knew.

And here and there, shining like stars on the active channels of the mentality, were recidivists who had returned from high transhuman states of mind, bringing back with them thought-shapes or mathematical constructions inexpressible in human words, haunted by memories of what the last Transcendence had accomplished, feverish with dreams of what the next might hold.

It was a time of cheer.

And yet, even in such golden days, there were those who would not be satisfied.

THE OLD MAN

On the hundred-and-first night of the Millennial Celebration, Phaethon walked away from the lights and music, movement and gaiety of the golden palace-city, and out into the solitude of the groves and gardens beyond. In this time of joy, he was not at ease himself; and he did not know why.

His full name was Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodi-fied (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconciousness, Base Neu-roformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043 (the "Reawakening").

This particular evening, the west wing of the Aurelian Palace-city had been set aside for a Presentation of Visions by the elite of Rhadamanthus Mansion. Phaethon had been extended an invitation to sit on the panel of dream-judges, and, eager to experience the future histories involved, had happily accepted. Phaethon had been imagining the evening, perhaps, would be in miniature, for Rhadamanthus House, what the High Transcendence in December would be for all mankind.

But he was disappointed. The review of one drab and uninspired extrapolation after another had drained his patience.

Here was a future where all men were recorded as brain-information in a diamond logic crystal occupying the core of the earth; there was one where all humanity existed in the

threads of a plantlike array of sails and panels forming a Dyson Sphere around the sun; a third promised, larger than worlds, housings for trillions of minds and superminds, existing in the absolute cold of trans-Neptunian space—cold was required for any truly precise subatomic engineering— but with rails or elevators of unthinkably dense material running across hundreds of AU, across the whole width of the solar system, and down into the mantle of the sun, both to mine the hydrogen ash for building matter, and to tap the vast energy of Sol, should ever matter or energy in any amount be needed by the immobile deep-space mainframes housing the minds of mankind.

Any one of them should have been a breathtaking vision. The engineering was worked out in loving detail. Phaethon could not name what it was he wanted, but he knew he wanted none of these futures being offered him.

Daphne, his wife, who was only a collateral member of the House, had not been invited; and, Helion, his sire, was present only as a partial-version, the primary having been called away to a conclave of the Peers.

And so it was that in the center of a loud, happy throng of brightly costumed telepresences, mannequins, and real-folk, and with a hundred high windows in the Presence Hall busy and bright with monotonous futures, and with a thousand channels clamoring with messages, requests, and invitations for him, Phaethon realized that he was entirely alone.

Fortunately, it was masquerade, and he was able to assign his face and his role to a backup copy of himself. He donned the disguise of a Harlequin clown, with lace at his throat and mask on his face, and then slipped out of a side entrance before any of Helion's lieutenants or squires-of-honor thought to stop him.

Without a word or signal to anyone, Phaethon departed, and he walked across silent lawns and gardens by moonlight, accompanied only by his thoughts.