La Edad De Oro (92 page)

Phaethon opened his mouth to protest. Surely the Sophotechs, infinitely wise, would not simply stand by and let him die?!

He closed his mouth again. He knew what the Sophotech logic would say. Phaethon had not invented the Noumenal Recording system. Orpheus had. It belonged only to Orpheus, and he was free to dispose of his property in any peaceful and lawful fashion he saw fit. He could not be compelled by force to give his services or his property or his lifework to anyone with whom he did not wish to deal.

And Phaethon had freely signed that contract.

“As of this moment, my son, you are no longer immortal.”

A sense of dread began to close in on Phaethon.

“Surely the Hortators have not yet posted an official decree—”

“It does not matter. Your attorney, Monomarchos, signed in your name a confession of judgment, don’t you remember? You signed away your right to any appeal. There will be no second Inquiry Hearing; this meeting is merely an announcement.”

“If they expect me to simply lie down somewhere and die, they are sadly mistaken!”

“That is exactly what they expect. They are not mistaken.”

“There are people who survive exile.”

“In fiction stories, perhaps. But even Lundquist in the old song was only exiled for a period of six hundred years. Yours is permanent. You might be able to jury-rig repairs to the nanomachinery in your cells which regenerates your wounds and restores your youth. But nanomachines draw their power from isotopic decay of the large atoms at the base of their spiral chains; no one will sell you life-water to replenish those atoms.”

“Life-water is the cheapest nanotechnology our society makes…” Phaethon began.

Helion’s voice was flat. “It is not your society anymore. You are alone. No one will sell you a drop of water.”

Phaethon closed his eyes and bowed his head.

Helion’s face was grave. “And do not ask Daphne to smuggle food or medicine to you; you would only involve her in the same downfall.”

“I won’t, Father,” Phaethon whispered.

Helion stepped forward, taking Phaethon by the shoulders. Phaethon raised his head. Helion said, “I see that you call me ‘Father’ instead of ‘Relic’ May I ask why?”

Phaethon shook his head. “Because I don’t think any of it matters anymore. Everything is over. I’ve ruined everyone’s lives and destroyed my own dreams… and now I have nothing and everything is over. We argue, you and I. We argue often. All those arguments are over. We’re never going to see each other again, are we?”

They looked deeply into each other’s eyes.

“Forgive me if I have not been the best of fathers, my son.” “If you will pardon me that I have not been the best of sons.”

“Don’t say that!” Helion’s voice was hoarse. “You are braver and brighter than I ever could have hoped… I am so very proud of you I cannot say…”

They embraced.

Sire and scion whispered good-byes to each other.

The doors opened, but the Inquest Chamber was not beyond. Instead, a large anteroom waited, carpeted in red and burgundy. Tall windows on the left threw sunlight on a cluster of low tables, chairs, and divans, standing ashtrays and formulation rods. To the right were Chinese screens and wardrobes.

A set of doors at the far end bore the book, grail, and flail emblem of the College. Evidently the actual chamber was beyond.

Phaethon frowned at the nearest formulation rod; it was an anachronism, dating from the period of the Warlock Counterprogressions in the Fifth Era.

Helion was looking at Rhadamanthus for an explanation. “Who added this chamber to my house?”

“Master, I thought you would want to change from your solar armor to proper period dress,” said the overweight butler, pointing toward the wardrobes. “Also, you have a guest who insisted on speaking to Mr. Phaethon before the hearing commenced. This was very much in character with your previous instructions to me on these matters, and an extrapolation of your personality assured me you would not mind. I hope I did not incorrectly anticipate your wishes?”

Helion looked impatient. “What guest do you imagine I would tolerate to use up the last few moments my son and I might ever have together?”

One of the chairs, facing away from them, had a back tall enough to hide from view the figure who had been sitting in it. Now he stood, a tall shape in a hooded robe of patterned red and gold webbed with colored threads and scaly with beadwork and chips of glass. The back of the hood was richly ornamented with beadwork as well, and bore the upright crescent that the hoods of king cobras might display, the sign of Brahma. The motion of standing sent highlights like embers trembling down from the narrow shoulders through the fabric.

Still facing away, the figure spoke. His voice was smooth, musical, and exotic. “Peers often extend to each other these small courtesies. Your time in our midst is short; you cannot be expected to acclimate yourself to all our graces instantly.”

He turned. His face was dusky; his eyes were large, liquid, magnetic. A Hindu caste mark gleamed in his forehead, beneath his hood a tasseled head cloth hid his hair.

Helion pointed with two fingers. “Ao Aoen. It is a pleasure to see you.” His tone was flat, belying his words. “I would have thought the small courtesies Peers extend to each other would have included avoiding the introductions of anachronisms into a mansion famed for its authenticity.”

“Fakirs, swamis, and magicians from the Orient figure prominently in the literature of your Victorian age. Surely one would not expect the chief of all chiefs of the Warlocks to represent himself as a stiff, rationalist, tradition-loving Englishman? Or… do you mean the formulation rods? But I needed a magic rod to stir my charms. Data flows and grows and shows strange lives and inner secrets of their own once a sufficient formulation is empatterned to allow an intuition to be triggered. I have woven your lives from one map to another, to see symmetries and signs which linear thinking can never display. Are you angry? I trust not. My depictions have shown me a danger. But have also show me a way.”

“A way…? Please tell us more, my good fellow Peer. I am certain you have engaged our interest,” Helion said pleasantly. Phaethon knew Helion disliked Warlocks and their riddles, their nonrational methods of thought. But Helion showed no impatience that Phaethon could see (or perhaps Helion broke Silver-Gray rules, and had Rhadamanthus running his face).

“A way to escape the danger I foresee.” Ao Aoen folded his arms, tucking his hands into the voluminous sleeves of his robe.

There was a moment while Phaethon and Helion waited for Ao Aoen to continue. Helion broke the silence: “We lend our ears most earnestly, my good Peer. Pray continue.”

The figure smiled inscrutably. “But the words are meant for Phaethon’s ears alone. They are eager to fly from my tongue like birds. But the instincts of birds in spring return them to their destined home, not elsewhere.”

Phaethon was surprised when Helion stepped to a nearby table, picked up a cigar trimmer lying there, and slashed his own palm, drawing blood. Helion winced and turned around, holding up his hand and spreading his reddened fingers.

Ao Aoen bowed deeply, obviously impressed. “I understand. Forgive me. You and Phaethon are of one blood; the message must be meant for you both.” Phaethon was not sure whether Ao Aoen was impressed because Helion’s symbolic gesture had been so Warlock-like or because the reputation of Rhadamanthus House ensured that, if Helion’s self-image showed a wound, Helion’s real brain would experience the real proportional pain.

Ao Aoen turned to Phaethon. “Have you considered, my dear Phaethon, that if you were a character in a romance, you would undoubtedly be the villain?”

Phaethon glanced at Helion. Was this a reference to his origin? If not, the coincidence seemed odd. On the other hand, the superintuitive structures of the Warlock brain tended to find order in odd coincidences. “What do you mean, sir? Please speak plainly.”

Ao Aoen spread his arms, making many small circles with his hands, and smiling. “Consider: you are a rich and selfish individualist, a heartless engineer, deaf to all pleas, who is willing to sacrifice family, friends, and foes alike, to pursue one overproud design. You have used yourself ruthlessly, and have deceived the College of Hortators, and broken your word and opened the forbidden memory casket, yes, even after you had been told that you had promised us all you would not! You have broken the heart and spurned the affection of the innocent heroine. And you plan to rely on lawyers’ tricks to steal your father’s gold, trampling his love as well. In the better-loved tales, something else prevails besides greed and selfishness and pride!”

Phaethon raised an eyebrow. He thought it was improper (to say the least) to jab a man about to be exiled with insults. He tried to keep his voice even and polite: “Perhaps the Peer enjoys a different fashion of fairy tales from myself. The three qualities you mention, sir, to call them by their proper names—ambition, independence, and self-esteem—always figured quite prominently in the stories I loved in my youth, I can assure you of that. Perhaps you make a public show, for reasons about which I do not care to speculate, of admiring the opposite qualities: sloth, sheepish conformity, and self-loathing, but certainly nothing in your career or speech or manner shows you have ever been acquainted, even remotely, with any of these. But you ought not fret. I am confident that, barring unforeseen circumstances, my future plans will allow the two of us relatively little opportunity to exchange recommendations of favorite authors. Now, if there is nothing further…?”

Ao Aoen stepped close and took his elbow, hissing in his ear, “Do you hate your father so much? If you prevail in your lawsuit, all his fortune is yours, wealth beyond wealth, which you have neither earned nor, once you are ostracized, can you ever spend. Why continue this farce? Even with all of Helion’s wealth, Gannis will not sell you one more gram of the Chrysadmantium you need to complete the work on your hull. You know the money is not yours. For shame! At least let your downfall and slow death have some grace and nobility about it!”

Phaethon ignored him, but looked at Helion in sudden puzzlement. “Surely the lawsuit by now is moot…” But he frowned as he said it, for he realized that it was not the case at all.

Helion said, “The Hortators have no legal status.” Ao Aoen smiled. All his teeth had been capped with gold, so that his smile was startling and odd. “The majesty of law is immense, all the more for being so little used. The Curia will not notice our private agreement among ourselves to boycott those on whom the Hortators frown, any more than your Queen Victoria of the Third Era British Empire cares what rules a group of schoolboys make among themselves to exclude their little sisters from a tree house planted in a back yard in Liverpool. The College can urge all to ignore you, good villainous Phaethon; but they will not be permitted to take by force, not one computer-second second, not one antigram, not one ounce of gold, of what blind law reckons to be yours.” Ao Aoen turned his half-lidded eyes toward Helion, “You see the implications, do you not? No tower can stand which is built on sand.”

Helion’s expression grew remote. He said in a distant voice, “In other words, if I concede the lawsuit, the Curia passes all my wealth to an exiled man. How much commerce do I affect, by keeping solar-radiation background levels clear enough to permit long-range broadcast traffic between distant points in the Golden Oecumene? Four percent of the entire economy? Six? This does not take into effect secondary industries which have grown up in my shadow; microwave powercasts, unshielded space assemblies, orbital dust farms, macroelectronics, or cheap counterterragenesis. How many of them could survive if we have sunspots again, or did not have bands of solar maser energy beamed directly across the Inner System to fixed industrial points?” Helion drew his eyes down. “Now picture all that in the hands of someone with whom only Neptunians, solitudarians, outcasts, crooks, and cacophiles can deal. How long will those of us who promised to abide by the Hortator’s mandates keep our promises?”

Ao Aoen said, “You are manor-born. Ask your pet machine who owns your soul and who pretends to serve you.” He nodded to where Rhadamanthus, represented as a butler, stood in the background.

“I do not need to ask,” said Helion. “The power of the College would be destroyed, one way or the other. It would defeat everything I have tried to build in this life. And yet it might be a fitting revenge against the Hortators who took my son from me. Gentlemen, if you will excuse me…?“ And he stepped behind a Chinese screen and opened the door to a wardrobe.

This was not the reaction Ao Aoen had expected. He stood with his fingertips rubbing against each other, eyes swinging left and right.

Instead of merely restarting his self-image in a different costume, Helion went through the motions of disassembling and discarding his solar armor, and putting on the linens, shirt, and trousers, waistcoat, coat, cuff links and ornaments of historical garb. The mansion created an image of a valet who entered the chamber and crossed over behind the screen to assist him.

Ao Aoen looked sidelong at Phaethon. “Why does he dress a computer-generated self-illusion?”

Phaethon spared him an irritated glance. “It is an exercise in self-discipline.”

“Aha. Will that selfsame discipline allow Helion’s social conscience to slumber? He will not pull down the pillars of our society, and lay flames to the toppling wreckage, not even to make a monument to the memory of his once-loved son. A delightful image, I agree, but it would make a poor reality.”

“What is the point and purpose of this comment, sir?”

The Warlock smiled, gold teeth bright against dark skin. “Do you know why Helion will stand by and watch you starve? Because he gave his word. He is as proud as you. Do you admire him?”

Phaethon was staring at the Chinese screen. He answered without reflection. “I love my father.”

Ao Aoen touched Phaethon on the shoulder. “Then drop your law case against him. You know it is unfair. Your father is a living man, there he stands; and you know a living man cannot have an heir.”