La Trascendencia Dorada (59 page)

“Your disorientation is understandable. You came here expecting danger and violence from me; instead, I have handed you the crown of victory. Pause not! Wait for nothing! Do not delay, but go!”

Was it victory? Phaethon was beginning to find his suspicions hard to maintain. Supposing the story told by Xenophon and the ghost possessing him to be false, what would be the point of such falsehood? Was there a Silent Phoenix, an enemy spaceship waiting somewhere, waiting for Xenophon to lead Phaethon into an ambush? It seemed unlikely. The Phoenix Exultant could achieve 99 percent of light-speed after three days of acceleration at ninety gravities. Who could intercept such a vehicle in the vastness of deep space? And what weapon could penetrate her hull? Antimatter could breach the hull, of course, but not without destroying everything held within.

And yet if destruction of the Phoenix was Xenophon’s goal, why not simply sell the vessel to Gannis for scrap? Where else could an ambuscade wait if not in deep space? Perhaps at the Silent Oecumene itself, at Cygnus X-l. It was hard to imagine a person (but not hard to imagine a machine intelligence) waiting the decades and centuries it might take to lure a victim into a trap. But what assurance would Xenophon imagine he had that Phaethon would actually go there?

Unless the story were true. Unless Xenophon, or the ghost of Ao Varmatyr, was simply so desperate, so convinced of the malice of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs, that he had risked everything on the hope that Phaethon would be so curious, and so compassionate, and so eager for the future which Varmatyr envisioned, a future of a thousand Phoenices founding a million worlds, that Phaethon would certainly go to Cygnus X-l.

But if the story were actually true, then it was not an ambush. There would be no trap at Cygnus X-l, only a grateful population who needed rescuing, and who would have at hand the resources to create the Phoenix fleet.

Phaethon thought about it. The Silent Oecumene would have the resources, in fact, to create a fleet which would begin the long-dreamt-of and long-delayed great diaspora of man throughout the universe; a diaspora which would never end as long as the stars still burned.

The vision was a stirring one. Yet it did not touch Phaethon as deeply as he would have thought. Perhaps he was more suspicious, more conscious of his duty, than he had ever known himself to be before.

Because he did have a duty here.

Phaethon signaled to the bridge crew to change the course of the Phoenix Exultant. In the energy mirrors, stars swam dizzyingly from left to right, and the great ship’s prow came about. The deck seemed to tilt as side accelerations played across the vessel.

The Silent One sent: “What is your decision? What new course is this?”

“I am returning to the Inner System. Naturally, you will have to stand to account for your crimes. No matter what your motives, good motives do not excuse bad acts, nor ends justify means.”

The Silent One sent: “You are deluded. I have explained the situation; if you continue in your present course, you will be betrayed by the Sophotechs. Think about what I have said! No other tale explains the facts! The Sophotechs conspire against you; your failure is part of their calculation. Don’t your own suspicions, your own desires, tell you that what I say is true?”

“That only means I’d like to believe you; it doesn’t mean I should.”

“The Sophotechs will ensnare you! Once you are back at port, the Phoenix Exultant will never fly again! What do you think will happen to this ship, if I, her owner, am punished, or if they change my mind or memory to make me like one of them? If I am one of them, I will not let her fly. Your courts of law, if I am punished, can cause me pain, or confinement, but they do not have the power to excuse your debts to your creditors. The Phoenix Exultant is no longer yours. What you do now will not make her yours again.

“Think of the magnitude of the decision you are about to make! On the one hand, yes, I have committed a fraud, I have deceived you and the Hortators, manipulated events, and frightened you. Small crimes! Weigh against that, on the other hand, that, if you return to port, and put yourself under the control of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs again, their courts of law and legal tricks, this ship is dead; all the dreams of future man are dead; the thing which makes Phaethon truly what he is, is dead; and all the folk of the Second Oecumene, women, children, innocents and all, all who hoped for you, are frozen, trapped, suspended in the warped space near the hole; all my people are dead.”

Phaethon was disturbed. The Silent One was right about the ownership of the Phoenix Exultant. Unless he, Phaethon, came up with an astronomical amount of money, and that in a very short time, the period of receivership would end, and the ownership of the Phoenix would be lost to Phaethon forever.

Nevertheless, Phaethon sent: “I would like very much to go save your people. But my likes and dislikes don’t change my duty.”

“Duty?!! Let me kill myself; all needs you might have for vengeance against my one poor person will be obviated; you will be free to soar to your waiting destiny!”

“I would still have to go back and pick up Daphne. I’ve decided to take her with me. And I cannot leave her in exile here.”

“Daphne! Your false Daphne, the image, the mere echo, of a woman unworthy of you?! They used Daphne to snare you last time! Don’t fall for the same trick twice!”

“Present some further evidence that what you say is true. I might change my mind.”

No message came back for several moments. The noetic unit showed high-speed activity in the coded brain sections, but no hint of what that activity implied. Was the Silent One calculating a response?

Then: “Phaethon, you would not have been sent into this situation with your conscience free and your free will and memory intact. Which means that there is a partial personality possessing you now, or false memories, or some other restraint or leash by which the War Mind still hopes to control you. Your actions seem grossly out of character. Your judgment has been affected. Think carefully: would the real Phaethon, Phaethon with his mind and soul intact, abandon the dream of his life, and his hopes for mankind, and all his work, and everything, merely to catch and punish one criminal like me? Is Phaethon’s notion of duty, of social obligation, so strong that it overrides all other personal considerations? You did not think so when you built this ship.”

“If my judgment has been infected or altered, what point is there in arguing further?”

“Argument might show that part of you who yet is pure how corrupt the other parts become. Answer the question: Is your behavior now in character for you?”

Phaethon was uncomfortable. Because, honestly, he did not recall exactly what it was Atkins had done to him, or had talked him into doing.

And did he trust a man like Atkins? Atkins was, and had to be, the kind of man who would do anything to prevail over his enemies, deceiving them, destroying them, killing them, by any means possible. What life did Atkins have? A life of endless bloodshed, and an endless preparation for future bloodshed. A life of suspicion, harsh discipline, ruthlessness toward others, pitilessness toward himself.

Atkins was a man of destruction. What had he ever created to compare with this great ship? What had he ever built?

For a moment, he was so glad that he was a man like himself, and not like Atkins.

And, after all, Atkins was not the sort of man one could trust.

Phaethon said, “The noetic unit can tell if I’ve been tampered with.”

“Precisely! I was counting on you to come to that very conclusion!” said the Silent One.

Without any further ado, Phaethon opened the epaulettes in his armor, and activated the thought ports, and made a connection between his brain and the noetic reader.

Like an explosion, the wild disorientation that raced through him, and the crushing pains that began to burn into his flesh, were the first signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The war for control of Phaethon’s nervous system took place at mechanical speeds his brain could not hope to match. The same interference that locked him out of control of his own armor, and blocked his frantic signals to the nanomachine cape that controlled every cell in his body, also prevented him from releasing the deadman switch to burn the Silent One with mirror weapons, and prevented the activation of his high-speed emergency personality.

And so he was simply too slow to react. The Silent One had somehow, without any visible machinery or physical connection to any mechanisms, invaded the noetic reader and reorganized the circuitry.

In the same split instant when Phaethon connected his mind to the machine, and long before he was even aware of what had happened, it was far, far too late.

Phaethon was in pain; he felt faint; sharp pains told him smaller bones in his body had broken, tissues were damaged. How? Blearily, he tried to read from his internal channels, tried to summon his personal thoughtspace. Nothing came. The channels were jammed; something was interfering with the cybernetics webbing his brain.

He tried to shut off his pain centers. That worked. His body was still being damaged, but he was blissfully unaware of it. He could concentrate.

The sensation of heat burning his body told him all be needed to know. His nanomachine cloak was in motion. Somehow (and he had no guess as to how) the Silent One had triggered the release cycle of his body’s internal high-gravity configuration. His tissues were softening, his blood was turning to liquid.

But the ship’s drive was still exerting massive thrust. Under twenty-five times his normal weight, Phaethon’s cells would surely rupture, and he would surely die.

An outside source turned on his personal thought-space, and the familiar images and icons from his adjutant status board were superimposed on the scene around him.

To the left was the dragon sign showing signal command, with information logistics spread like wings behind the picture. Behind him were trophies, emblems, awards, decorations. To his right were a number of pictures: a winged sword, a roaring tiger with a lightning bolt in its claws, an anchor beneath a crossed musket and pike, a three-headed vulture holding, in one claw, a lance, and in the other, a shield adorned with a biohazard triskeleon.

Directly in front of him was a standard naval menu: an olive drab curve of windows and control icons, with a brass wheel and joystick, astrogator’s globe, fuel-consumption displays. A menu above the wheel controlled the interface between his armor and the ship mind. This menu showed a red exclamation mark: Password Not Accepted: No Course Corrections Enabled Without Proper Password. Resubmit?

The Silent One’s voice came into his ear, directly into his ear. That was a bad sign, since it meant the Silent One had somehow seized control of his armor, or, at least, the circuits in his helmet. But it was not a sign as bad as it might have been: the thought ports in his armor were evidently not allowing the noetic reader to redact or to manipulate his nervous system. The circuit woven into his brain must still be free. The Silent One’s words were not appearing, for example, directly in his auditory nerve, or, worse yet, directly into his mind and memory. The noetic reader was not controlling his mind. He still could choose not to listen or not to obey.

The words were: “Submit the password. If your body completes its cycle before the drives are shut down, you perish.”

Phaethon wondered why the noetic reader did not simply pick the password out of his memory.

“The password we read from your memory is not valid.”

Phaethon truly wished he could have somehow not thought the next thought which leaped into his mind. Because that thought was this: If his password was invalid, then someone had overridden it. The only one who could possibly have an override to Phaethon’s authority over this ship, the only person who could convince the ship to ignore Neoptolemous’s legal ownership, was Atkins. During the period Phaethon had erased from his memory, Phaethon must have given Atkins an override.

Which meant Atkins was aboard the ship.

“Where?”

Phaethon did not remember.

Atkins must have planned to do the same thing he did with the enemy hidden in Daphne’s horse. Namely, to allow the enemy to defeat and kill Phaethon, and watch to see what they did with the spoils of victory.

“You think we are defeated? Your conclusion that Atkins, wherever he is hiding, will simply be able to destroy me is unwarranted. Why hasn’t he shown himself?”

Obviously, because the Silent One had not yet done whatever it was he had come here to do. Atkins was waiting for the enemy to reveal his real plans.

“I have told you all my plans. You still do not believe that I act in good faith? You are a fool! But I still need you to save my people. Tell me the password; otherwise you die; I die; and even Atkins, if he is aboard, is carried away out of your Solar System at twenty-five gravities, aboard a ship that no one can stop and no one can board.”

But Phaethon did not remember the password.

“Open your memory caskets.”

The Silent One was able to manipulate at least some of the functions in Phaethon’s sense filter: A memory casket seemed to appear on the symbol table next to him.

“If Atkins is aboard, as you believe he is, and you think he is ready to destroy me once I show my real goals, as obviously you do, then not only does it not matter if I gain access to the ship-mind—the real ship-mind this time, not the dummy with which you deceived me before—it actually aids your cause, doesn’t it?”

The problem with dealing with an enemy who was reading one’s mind was that bluff, deceit, or delay was impossible. The Silent One knew that Phaethon thought Atkins was aboard and waiting. But the Silent One simply did not believe Phaethon’s beliefs were correct.

Of course, Phaethon had no notion of what was going on inside of the Silent One’s mind.

“I wish you did. If there were a way I could make this noetic reader able to decode my thoughts, I would use it; then you would see that I am not your enemy; that I am, ultimately, the only true friend you have, Phaethon.”